It's My Life
by Holly Kasakabe
Summary: Holly Kirkland has never been "normal," nor does she care to be. All she wants is to live her life. When being arrested leads her to the people who will allow that to happen, how can she stay away? She supposes everyone at the Jeffersonian's alright and so long as she doesn't have a gun, Booth doesn't mind. Rated M for language, violence, possible triggers, and references to sex.
1. Chapter 1

My name is Holly Elena Emily Anya Kirkland. I'm seventeen years old. My few friends call me nicknames derived from Elena or Emily most of the time. Holly isn't the best for making nicknames out of. I've got dark black hair and vivid blue eyes, with fringe that never wants to do as it's told. After a long day, my hair doesn't want to be tame, and my cheeks flush with exhaustion. It's a testament to my natural pale skin tone that I've never actually needed to use lightener on my skin. I've only ever needed concealer or sunburn stuff, because I don't tan. I burn. I'm tall and agile. I'm strong and fast and light on my feet, and I'm not the healthiest person ever. I'm not exactly malnourished, but I'm not eating as much as I should be. Not that I can help it; money's tight, and that's all there is to it, my friend. I get lots of exercise to make up for it, though.

I have some scars on my arms. I'm not into cutting and self-harm; I tried it once, when I was depressed, because I'd read about how people find it freeing because the physical manifestation of pain lets them control their panicking emotions. As soon as the razor cut my skin, I decided never to do it again, because it hurt like a bitch and I was really glad I'd gotten a tetanus shot. The scars are mostly from getting hurt; beat up in an alley, falling off of things, getting into fistfights.

It's the bruises that healed. That's what I use concealer for. I've been in a few foster homes that ended badly. The mothers were too scared, too drunk, too stupid, or too cruel to put a stop to their husbands when they beat me. It was never the other children, if there were any; it was just me. I hated it. I hated being beaten by people who were sworn to protect and support me. I've got no illusions about love, be it between two people or between a family. I have none directed towards me.

Right. My existence was a common mistake; simply put, a high school couple got it on and didn't take precautions against pregnancy. I was put up to adoption right after I was born. I don't know who my biological parents are, nor do I particularly care. They obviously didn't want me, so why should I want them? Since then, I was passed between foster homes. I never stayed for too long; the longest was a few years, and that was just through infancy. Once I could walk, talk, and generally control motor functions, I pitched tantrums and threw fits. I was a real brat. I never got myself into an abusive home until I was eight, which was good. Any earlier and I might not have gotten out without permanent damage. I pitched fits, picked fights, and generally acted like a self-centered bitch. I was never really happy with any of my foster families. I'm pretty sure I set the record for 'highest number of foster families for one child'.

Currently, my legal guardians have been my legal guardians for a little over a year. Unfortunately, a lot happened in that time. My 'parents' drove away one day and never came back. My 'brother' enlisted for the army without telling me, but he left me with a fair stash of money and signed a document. With a little bit of computer work, I could copy down the documents of a rent contract and get my own place. That's exactly what I did. No one knows, because it's not exactly legal, but I'm scraping along on my own pretty well. I live in a bad part of town, and it's gotten me into fights before, but I'm street smart as well as book smart and so I can take care of myself for the most part.

I earn money for the rent by working a shift at a nearby bar. For being in a shady part of the neighborhood, it's actually not that bad. For one, it doesn't make me dress up like a harlot. I can wear whatever I like; namely, jeans and a tank top or sweater. I don't make a show of myself. I'd rather wear jeans because I can run and actually do things. I like sweaters because I get cold. Who needs a corset when they can wear a tank top and actually breathe? Secondly, the hours are reasonable. I got a high school diploma a few years back. Despite how troublesome I can be, I'm extremely intelligent. I know several verbal languages, and I'm passable in sign language. I have no college degrees, but I do have hobbies of looking up stuff like law enforcement and science. Thirdly, the people who come here aren't all bad. I actually met a friend here. Most of the regulars ask for me by name; my excellent memory usually lets me just see who it is and then place their order in the queue without even going to see them. Fourthly, it's pretty quiet around here.

So imagine my surprise when a man stepped through. Easily, I picked out the gun in its holster at the side of his waist. Small but effective. Probably standard FBI issue, if his suit was anything to go by. It was pristine and fancily tailored. He had a silk tie and a grey suit jacket. His slacks were black and just covered the tops of his dressy shoes which were both business casual and okay for running. He had a ridiculous belt buckle and striped socks. His hair was cleanly cut, short and black. I couldn't make out many of his features – he was half the room away – but I could tell he had a strong build and a well-defined jawline. He was most certainly in a good position, job and money-wise, and he didn't seem the type to slum the streets of this neighborhood. So what was he doing here? Well, I wanted to find out.

I went over to the pedestal that held the menus of alcoholic beverages, and had a small selection of greasy junk to eat. Fries, nachos, soda, and other stuff that was fine other places but tasted like poison here weren't ordered very often. From my previous thought, you can probably guess why. I met the man when he came to the pedestal where people waited to be sat and I gave him a friendly smile. Just because I act arrogant most of the time doesn't mean I can't be friendly. I'm not really a people person, and I'm naturally inclined toward violence. Thinking over how I grew up, it's not that surprising. However, I'm not a bad person, so I can be friendly to others. Plus, it was bad for business to hassle the customers.

"Welcome, sir," I said cordially. Although my smile was in place, I was sure my eyes seemed dull. How many times had I said this over the past months? "My name is Holly, and I'll be serving you this morning." I would have added that it was an ungodly hour in the morning, but I thought better of it. Who goes to a bar at seven in the morning? As it was, the place was almost empty. Aside from myself, the only other people on duty were a sixteen-year-old girl named Helena who was friendly and fun to be around (but who didn't particularly like me a lot) and a really rude nineteen year old guy named Jordan.

"Are you Holly Kirkland?" He asked, inquisitive. He raised an eyebrow and he rolled his shoulders, trying to appear intimidating.

I backed up a step. Here in this part of town, at this job, it was just common sense that you didn't tell people your surname. "Helena!" I called over my shoulder for the younger girl. Even though she didn't really like me, she was good-natured and cared about everyone, so I knew that she would keep an eye on what was going on so that if something happened, she could call the police. I turned back to the man. "Yes, sir, I am Holly Kirkland, but I must ask who you are and how you know my name. If you refuse to answer, then I will deem you a threat to the safety of my colleagues and will report you to security," I stated solemnly, following the basic protocol for this job.

The man nodded, as if he accepted that this was fair. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a little billfold. He flipped it open. It had no money or cards, but it had a shining badge. "FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth," the agent said. Squinting at the badge for a moment, I realized it had the national seal etched onto the cover, which proved it real and not forged. "Holly Kirkland, I'd like to ask you some questions. Currently you are a suspect in our investigation of the murder of Martin Davis."


	2. Pilot, Part One

The door clicked shut behind the FBI agent as he entered the interrogation room. I sat with my arms and legs crossed, chair pushed away from the table. I'd gone with Special Agent Seeley Booth to the FBI building willingly; but I wasn't happy about it. I hadn't murdered anyone, although I knew why they thought I did. Martin Davis and I had attracted quite a crowd of the backstreet hoodlums a few days ago when he'd provoked me into fighting him. I kicked his ass, naturally. For the last half hour, I'd glared straight at the upper half of the wall on my right, which I knew was actually a one-way mirror.

Booth pulled out the lone chair across from me. He looked at me for a moment, as if inviting me to get anything out in the open. "I want a lawyer," I said immediately.

Booth's eyebrows arched. "Is that a confession?" He asked, leaning forwards. "Because when someone asks for a lawyer, they're usually guilty."

"Or intelligent," I countered, not relaxing my position. "Even if I didn't do anything, if I was framed or there was circumstantial evidence, I could be charged if I don't have any legal protection. Theoretically, it's much less risky to have a legal representative, especially in my circumstances." I narrowed my eyes as Booth sighed. "And don't think you can antagonize me about it. I know my rights. You, slacker, neglected to read the Miranda Rights to me as of yet. As sanctioned by the aforementioned, I will be appointed an unbiased lawyer and given time to counsel privately with she or he before I am required to answer any of your questions or am charged for any accounts."

Booth's eyes widened, but he quickly made his expression one of unsurprised disappointment once more. I guess he hadn't expected me to be able to point that out. "I'd like to ask you a few questions. If you are opposed to answering or feel that they infringe on your rights, you will be appointed a lawyer. If you see them able to be answered, then go ahead and say however much you prefer. If you are still a suspect after these preliminary questions, then a lawyer will be issued."

I nodded, sucking on the inside of my cheek in thought. This seemed fair and was legal, and didn't harass, antagonize, or violate any of my rights as a citizen of America. "Agreed."

Booth took this as a good sign. He straightened up in his seat and set a clipboard on the table. He uncapped a pen and looked down to the paper. "What is your full name?"

"Holly Elena Emily Anya Kirkland."

It took Booth a moment to write it down. I have a lot of middle names. It's unusual, yeah, but I think it had something to do with my adoptive parents being unable to come to a consensus. That makes the most sense, anyway.

"Age?"

"Seventeen."

"And who are your parents?"

Impatiently, I listed off the names of my legal guardians, but then quickly tacked on, "But they've been missing for around a year, so don't bother trying to contact them. Legally my older brother is responsible for me. He's enlisted in the army but I reside at our house." Not completely a lie. He was in the army and I did still live in the house… sort of. Alright, we owned the land, but it wasn't valuable enough to take a mortgage or sell. I had a small place owned by myself, so a lot of my things were kept at the family house. Not that we were much of a family anymore.

Booth leaned forward. His eyes were deep brown and they searched mine for any hint of deceit. "Do you know Martin Davis?"

"Yep," I nodded casually. "Well, I did. He's sort of dead now. Get your verb tenses right, man. He was a real douche."

"Are you aware of why you are a suspect?" Booth asked, watching me in curiosity. I suppose no one acted as flippant as I was right now.

I shrugged. "Can't say for certain, but it's no secret in that neighborhood that Davis and I had a rivalry. We duked it out in an alley a few days ago. I whooped his ass, but I suppose any of his gang wouldn't have told you that, huh?" I smirked. "I assume you have his body in custody. If you look, you'll see the nose has been broken. That would be my handiwork."

Booth seemed mildly disturbed by my contempt for a dead man. "Is there any particular reason you fought, disagreed, or seem proud of your actions?"

"He was a drug dealer," I said, waving it off. "I didn't particularly care for him. Aside from being rude, he was incompetent. He's overdosed many times and drank copious amounts of alcohol. I'm not surprised the idiot ended up dead. Davis and I had lots of disputes because of what his gang did. See, he has this group of followers," I explained, starting to get into it. I uncrossed my legs and leaned forward, straightening my back, and used my hands to gesticulate my words. "They're all pretty stupid, and they all do drugs, too. Most of them have no family or have it rough at home. If they have a home, that is. They're usually between fifteen and twenty. They're pretty much black sheep. No one does anything if they don't think it'll benefit them or Davis in some way. A few months ago, there was this whole rumble. It was an all-out gang war, mostly about territory. One of the groups was from the ghetto part of the city, and they played really dirty. From what I heard, they used knives. Anyway, apparently they got several of Davis' mules to switch to their side. Since then, they've been the laughing stock of my part of town."

Booth nodded, showing that he was following along. "Now, Davis's group got pretty angry about this, as you can imagine. I work regular hours at that bar; more than a few times, I've seen some of the morons harassing others. Not from other gangs, but just people. Youngest I think was fourteen. They usually bribe their desired recruits with drugs; heroin, crack, the works. If that doesn't work, they get nasty and threatening. I've stepped in whenever I see that happening."

"And you don't beforehand?" Booth interrupted, flicking his pen on the clipboard.

I shrugged. "If they choose to do drugs and go nowhere with life, then that's their decision. If they try to make smart decisions, but their safety is threatened by people who have nothing better to do with their lives, then I act, because at that point it's not in their control and they need help. Anyway, his gang doesn't care for me anymore. If they could get away with it, I bet they'd have killed me by now. Davis and I just had a fight not long ago about it, because I was pissed off that he was harassing the community and he was ticked that I wasn't letting him be the king of his world of the damned. I wouldn't be surprised if I was next on their hit list."

"That doesn't worry you?" Booth questioned with a slight frown.

I knocked my head back and forth. "Well, it's not exactly a great feeling, but they'd never be able to pull it off unless they got a worse person to do their work, and I think I'd know if someone like that came around."

Another person came in, cracking the door open slightly. "Agent Booth?" It was a younger officer who seemed fidgety. "Homeland Security did as you asked. They're requesting your presence now."

Booth looked to me indecisively, like he couldn't determine what to do with me while he was going to see what Homeland Security wanted. I leaned back in my chair and raised my eyebrows questioningly, a light smirk in place. "Well, Agent Booth?" I asked, taunting him almost indiscernibly. "You can let me go or take me with you."

Another man stepped in. He had greying hair that was kept in a short crop cut. He had bags under his eyes and his skin was starting to take on an ashen hue. It wouldn't be too long before he could get a discount at the Early Bird Special. His form suggested he used to be muscular, but now I bet I could knock him over with a single punch to the sternum. He had a weapon at his side and wore a grey suit of high class material. He was probably Booth's superior. "Agent Booth, this woman is still a suspect in murder, and if she believes that she may be on a 'to kill' list, then it is our duty as the FBI to treat her as both."

Booth's eyes widened. "Sir, are you saying she's under our protection?"

"Your protection, Booth," the senior agent quickly reiterated. "From this point onwards, until this investigation on Martin Davis's murder is concluded, Miss Holly Kirkland is your charge. Where you go, she goes, or if she is injured it's on you."

I snickered at the look on Booth's face. He looked like he wanted to shoot himself and be done with this. "Wow, Agent Booth," I said innocently, blinking owlishly at the agent, who sent me a helpless look. "I guess I get to see what a real-life FBI officer does now."

Booth shook his head, hitting the heel of his hand to his forehead before standing up. He stood so abruptly his chair screeched as it was shoved backwards against the floor. He didn't bother to shove it back in. I stood up more calmly, sliding from my chair and pushing it in near-silently. Booth wagged a finger at me in warning. "We're going to meet someone," he said brashly. "Just stay calm and stay out of my way!"

"Your kindness warms my heart," I drawled sarcastically. You'd think he could be a bit more polite.

* * *

><p>Homeland Security was using an interrogation room across the building which didn't take too long to get to. Then I found who we were there to pick up. A woman was sitting in the chair calmly, a messenger bag on the table in front of her. Three burly agents were surrounding her, but she wasn't intimidated in the least. She had sharp features and bright, clever eyes. Her soft brown hair was voluminous and wavy, the ends of her low ponytail curling up slightly. Her complexion was spotless. She was thin, but not scrawny, and seemed strong enough. She wore dressy slacks and polished shoes that clicked as she impatiently tapped her feet. She wore a dark green shirt with a semi-low neckline and a dark vest with pockets over it. She had simple green earrings dangling above her shoulders.<p>

Her name is Temperance Brennan, PhD. She had a doctorate degree in forensic anthropology and is multilingual. She is quite possibly the most brilliant forensic scientist in the world. She works at the Jeffersonian Institution with her colleagues and several interns. She is forthright and blunt and socially inept. She is also a bestselling author; she happens to be my very favorite author, for that matter. She wrote of the endeavors of forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs and her tasks of catching serial murderers along with the help of her forensics team and her liaison with the federal bureau. Her most recent novel is called _Bred in the Bone_.

"Look, I'm sorry if I embarrassed you in front of your friends," she was saying in a bit of exasperation. "But next time you should identify yourself before attacking me." She turned to look at Booth, who was next to me in the doorway, her voice very accusatory. "What are you doing here?"

Booth held out his badge to the agent who seemed in charge of Dr. Brennan's interrogation. "FBI. Special Agent Seeley Booth, Major Crime Investigation, D.C.. Bones identifies bodies for us."

"Don't call me Bones," Brennan reprimanded. "And I do more than identify."

I rifled through the belongings in my satchel before removing my copy of _Bred in the Bone_. "She also writes books," I added cheerfully, holding up the novel.

The agent huffed unhappily. "Fine. She's all yours, Booth," he said, sliding Brennan's messenger bag back across the table to her.

"Great," Booth said without much enthusiasm. "Bones, this is Holly Kirkland. She's under FBI protection due to gang rivalry stirred by a murder. She'll be coming with us." I waved at the anthropologist with a bright smile. She was my role model! Brennan gave me a nod of acknowledgement. "Now, let's grab your skull and vamoose."

"What!" Brennan exclaimed, irked. She whirled back to the Homeland Security agents. "That's it? She's all yours? Why did you stop me?"

"Why does it matter?" Booth intervened, suspiciously quick to speak up. "You're free to go. Let's just grab your bags."

Something seemed to dawn on Brennan. She glared at Booth, her jaw dropping slightly in indignant disbelief. "You set me up!" She accused. She whirled back to the agent again. "You got a hold-for-questioning request from the FBI, didn't you?" The agent seemed lost with the scientists' fury on him, and looked to Booth for directions. Brennan saw this and glared back at the FBI agent, who winced, knowing that he'd been caught red-handed.

"I love your books," I said mildly, to diffuse the sudden tension.

It did break the awkward silence. With the clicking of her heels, Brennan gave me another nod of acknowledgement to my statement and then grabbed her bag. She stalked past Booth defiantly. "Come on," she grumbled, discontented.

* * *

><p>"That's the best you can do?" Brennan fumed when we were all in Booth's SUV. I didn't know where, exactly, we were going, but we'd loaded into Booth's vehicle. Booth was driving and I got into the back without complaint due to my respect for Brennan. The city flashed by as we drove along the road.<p>

"What?" Asked Booth, wincing like he knew what was coming.

"Getting Homeland Security to snatch me so that you can stage a fake rescue," Brennan explicated curtly, steam practically coming out of her ears.

"Well, at least I picked you up from the airport." Booth looked away from the road for a moment to award Brennan a charming smile. Brennan wasn't at all amused. She glared at him and crossed her arms. "Hey, come on," Booth tried again to regain her favor. "I went through the appropriate channels, but your assistant there, he stonewalled me!"

Brennan smiled in a satisfied way. "Well, after the last case, I told Zach to never, ever put you through. He's a good assistant." I snorted under my breath. I don't think either of them heard me. _What an epic burn! _"You can let me out anywhere along here."

"Alright, listen," Booth caved, pressing down a little more on the gas. "A decomposed corpse was found this morning at Arlington National Cemetery."

I raised my eyebrows, as did Brennan, and we both looked to Booth, less than impressed. "Dude, Arlington National Cemetery is full of decomposed corpses," I told him, not entirely sure any more about his competency. "It's… well, it's a cemetery."

"Yeah, but this one is your type of corpse," Booth elaborated, nodding his head forward and keeping his focus on the road. "It wasn't in a casket."

Brennan rolled her eyes, ignoring the FBI agent's words. "If you drive one more block, I'm screaming 'kidnap' out the window," she decided, smiling faintly like she would be highly entertained if she had a reason to do that.

"You know, I'm trying to mend bridges here," Booth scowled.

"Pull over," Brennan said more insistently.

Without a choice, Booth pulled over at the next parking meter. Brennan immediately got out of the vehicle and started walking off down the sidewalk. Booth and I scrambled to get out of the SUV for different reasons. I jogged to catch up with the anthropologist while Booth sped along, trailing slightly behind.

"I'm going home," Brennan announced.

"Great!" Booth started, before his face fell. "Could we just skip this part?"

"I find you very condescending," Brennan informed him neutrally.

"I agree," I nodded, smiling mischievously.

"Me?" Booth repeated, aghast. He walked even faster to keep up. "_I'm _condescending? I'm not the one who's got to mention that she's got a doctorate every five minutes," he pointed out, enunciating the last few words clearly to show exasperation to go along with the exaggeration.

Brennan turned around to walk backwards, her heels clicking softly on the concrete. I followed suit, crossing my arms and setting a moderate pace to match Brennan's as we marched backwards. "I am the one with the doctorate," Brennan laughed, not seeing why Booth was upset.

"Well, you know what?" Booth demanded, not giving her a chance to reply. "I'm the one with the badge and the gun. You know, you're not the only forensic anthropologist in town."

Brennan giggled and spread her arms in a cocky manner. "Yes, I am! The next nearest is in Montreal."

We turned around to walk facing forward. Laughing, I called over my shoulder, "_Parlez-vous Francais?" Do you speak French? _To Booth, who followed, a well-defined frown on his face. He didn't seem to like that not only was Brennan not giving him what he wanted, but that I was taking the scientist's side.

Booth stopped walking and threw his arms in the air, frustrated. "What's it going to take?"

Brennan stopped dead and spun on her heel to face Booth, done with laughing and completely serious. "Full participation in the case," she deadpanned.

"Fine," Booth willingly agreed quickly.

"Not just lab work, everything," Brennan explicated again.

"What?" Booth said, raising his eyebrows at her skeptical expression. "Do you want me to spit in my hand? We're Scully and Mulder."

Brennan frowned lightly. "I don't know what that means."

"It's a movie reference," I told her helpfully.

"It's an olive branch," Booth sighed. "Just get back in the car."

* * *

><p>I'd only ever been to Arlington National Cemetery once before, and that was to pay my respects to a man I knew that had been killed by a gang. It was on a large, gentle slope that went down towards a large pond. The vegetation was fertile and the forest-green grass healthy. The rows of headstones were organized and spaced around seven feet apart from each other, giving space for caskets. Booth was leading us down to the pond, with Brennan at his heels. I observed the crime scene markings while walking behind them more leisurely. If I had grown up differently, been in a good foster home, then I would have actually gone to college to get a degree in science, crime, law enforcement, whatever, instead of being forced to cultivate my knowledge via library books and science and law websites. Admittedly, my level of intelligence was still credible, although I didn't have the credentials I'd like.<p>

"What's the context of the find?" Brennan asked, getting down to business quickly. Yellow crime scene tape marked off nearly the entire cemetery. A few crime scene crew vans were parked outside the cemetery gates and the workers were scattered around the scene.

"Routine landscaping dropped a load in the local pond," Booth said, his eyes scanning over a clipboard. "One of the workmen thought he saw something."

A van door with the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal lab seal closed firmly. Brennan's assistant from the Jeffersonian speed-walked up to her. "Hi, Zach," Brennan greeted distantly, more focused on the case than her coworker.

"This eco-warrior look works for you," Zach complimented. He had on a light blue lab coat on, but he didn't look too professional. His dark brown eyes practically screamed 'puppy dog', and his floppy hair wasn't very tame. He seemed young for someone of his profession, and he didn't have the same masculine build that Booth had. He seemed to radiate peaceful vibes, although he spoke very professionally, so I wondered if he was doing that on purpose.

"Thanks," Brennan replied.

"Very action-oriented," Zach added.

"Agent Booth, Miss Kirkland, my assistant Zach Addy," Brennan introduced quickly.

"Hi!" I chirped with a cheery smile. I was thoroughly enjoying my day. Aside from the interrogation, I got to skip most of my work shift, got to meet my favorite author, and now I get to observe a real federal case. It was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of opportunity for someone like me.

"Oh, yeah," Booth grumbled, obviously not in Zach's favor.

Zach ignored Booth. "How was Guatemala?" He asked his boss. "Dig up lots of massacred victims? Learn a thing or two about machete strikes?"

"That sounds awesome!" I exclaimed, but no one paid any attention to me, so what does it matter?

"Zach, I need water samples and temperature readings from the pond," Brennan stated mildly.

Zach stopped short and nodded. "Right away, Dr. Brennan," he said amiably before turning and heading to a crime scene unit to get the tools.

Booth rubbed the back of his neck as the slope leveled out when we got closer to the shore of the water. "He's got no sense of discretion, that kid," he complained rudely. "Typical squint."

"I don't know what that means," Brennan said without much care about it either way. She pulled on some white latex gloves as we got closer to a little boat armed with sonar equipment. Her steps slowed only slightly.

"When cops get stuck, we bring in people like you," Booth explained impatiently. "You know? Squints. You know, because you squint at things."

I scoffed, miffed at the comment. Even if I wasn't qualified, I was still rather intelligent, and if, by some miracle, I could actually ever begin getting credentials for a career, I'd love to do what Dr. Brennan and her interns do. "Oh, so you mean people with high IQs and basic reasoning skills."

Booth looked chastened and he didn't like the feeling, so he looked away from Brennan, who was glaring at him, and myself, who wasn't doing much better. "Yeah," he mumbled.

When we were a few feet away from the boat, Booth stopped in his tracks and turned to me. "Alright, Miss Kirkland," he started.

"Holly," I corrected. I didn't like being called by my last name. 'Kirkland' was just a reminder that I didn't have a real family, because before that it was Williams, before that it was McIntosh, and so on and so on.

Booth took the opportunity to inhale deeply, but he rolled with it. "Holly," he repeated. "You stay here on the shore." I opened my mouth to protest, but he beat me to it. "The boat's got expensive equipment and you're… well." I raised an eyebrow challengingly. He was judging me based on where I lived? How shallow! "And this is a crime scene."

"Actually, I decide that," Brennan interrupted. "And I hardly think that her social status makes her a threat to security or the stability of this operation. She has proven so far that she can behave herself."

Normally, I'd be irked at being spoken about in her clipped manner, but it was Brennan, and she was socially awkward. I'd seen her on TV, so I knew she always spoke that way, whether or not she meant to be insulting. Brennan continued. "However, Holly, I do think it beneficial for you to stay on the shore. There is no way of telling what we may encounter and it may be a case where we need to call in other officers, and unless you know forensics, then you will not prove beneficial to us in that instance." I chose to bite my tongue and pretend I didn't study forensics in my free time. "Given that you are under the protection of Booth, I propose you stay within sight of us, but I see no reason for you to be unable to roam the cemetery."

Because cemeteries are so scenic.

But I just nodded out of respect for her and waved as the boat set out more towards the middle of the pond. After they were dissolved into conversation with each other (seemed intense), I turned on my heel and loitered around. At first I stayed by the shore, hopping on the larger rocks squaring off the vegetation from the mud, but after a few minutes I got bored with that when my boots slipped and I fell over. Pouting, I got back up to my feet, brushed myself off with whatever dignity I still had in the eyes of anyone that had seen, and mulled over what I could do.

I could bother people or go read the names of the gravestones. Bother people, read. Bother people, read. Ah, decisions, decisions. Usually I prefer to be a nuisance than to read gravestones. Gravestones mark the deaths of people who were loved by others, and to read and walk by them without a connection to the deceased seemed almost incriminating. But on the other hand, I didn't know anyone here and I had nothing to do. Booth had made me leave my bag (which had my copy of Brennan's novel) in his SUV. I preferred to lone it. In my experience, people were worse than objects. Objects did as told and didn't talk back. They couldn't break promises. Then again, they couldn't exactly make them, either. They didn't disappoint. People, on the other hand, were full of flaws and dishonesty. I'd never met anyone who I could actually trust before, probably due to my abusive families, rebellious nature, and bad girl reputation when I was still in school.

I'd just rather bother someone that I knew, because that way I sort of had an idea of their behavior. I only knew the names and a bit of the personalities of three people; and even though I didn't know much, it was better than nothing. Brennan and Booth were sort of in the middle of a pond, and that left Brennan's intern.

I located him kneeling by the shoreline by his recognizable hair. Most of the other people here were either female with their hair up in ponytails or male, who had their hair cut short. Zach was the only person with longer hair that wasn't tied up. After a moment of hesitation, I strolled over to him with a confident gait and kneeled by him, balancing on my knees and rocking backwards to stay upright. It wasn't the most comfortable, but I was used to not being cozy.

"Hi!" I greeted brightly, trying to come off as optimistic. Booth's judgment of me through my social class was offensive and had made me realize how much I was acting like a stereotypical inhabitant of the ghetto. I wore dark clothes, little or no jewelry, boots, and was pessimistic. My body language practically screamed GET AWAY, I'M DANGEROUS. Even though that was just coincidence and I usually really did act like that, for some reason I was determined not to let him be proved correct. "You're Zach Addy, right?" I questioned, even though I knew for sure that was his name.

"Yes," Zach answered, opening a vial and sterilizing his tools to take a water sample. "And you're Agent Booth's charge, Miss Kirkland."

"Please call me Holly," I invited. "Or Elena. Or Emily. Or Anya. Or some derivative of any of those. I don't really care for being called by my surname. See, mine's pretty interchangeable." I smiled, watching him work acutely.  
>"Is there something you need, Holly?" Zach asked. To the point. Okay then. Was he trying to get me to leave, or did he genuinely think I sought him out for assistance?<p>

"I just wanted some way to occupy myself while Booth's taking a ride on the pond," I said with a shrug.

"Ah, I see. You were bored."

"Yeah, that sums it up nicely."

"I understand," Zach said with a nod while he sealed the vial shut and set it in a secure, sterile container to prevent bacteria from worming its way through and into the sample.

I stayed there for another moment, waiting for Zach to say something with more finality. The vibes he was giving off suggested he wanted me to leave. He wasn't being very friendly, but he wasn't being aggressive or inhospitable, either. While nothing he did suggested he wanted me to leave, nothing he did suggested he wanted me to stay, either.

Despite my usual habit of shying away from people, I found myself mentally scrambling for something to say to dissipate the uncomfortable quiet. I didn't usually mind quiet, but Zach didn't give the nonverbal hints into his mood that most people did. "Is it reasonable to assume you're a graduate student?" I finally decided on asking. He worked as an intern and seemed quite intelligent, so he didn't have his doctorate yet, but he seemed well on the way.

Zach sealed another water sample before zipping up the containment chest. "You would be correct if you did. I am a grad student working towards my first doctorate in forensic anthropology under Dr. Brennan's guidance."

I caught the unspoken implication of a second study. "And what's the other doctorate on?" I prodded.

"My second doctorate is half complete and in the study of applied engineering," Zach answered without a hassle after the prompt. I nodded to myself. So he was just socially awkward, but to more of an extent than I was. His lack of social cues wasn't on purpose. He didn't mind that I was there, and as far as I was concerned, he was being friendly. I smiled slightly to myself. I decided Zach was a good guy.

"Dr. Zach Addy," I mused aloud for his benefit. "Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

Zach recorded the water temperature on a spreadsheet. "It does sound pleasing to hear, however that is likely more because I aspire to achieve that title than because of the specific vibrational pattern."

I grinned. I liked the way he spoke. It was refreshing and different than most people's speech patterns. It was pretty interesting.

"Holly!" Booth shouted my name and beckoned me over as the boat pulled back up to the shore. Brennan was stepping out of the boat and talking to one of the technicians who had set up the sonar equipment, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. I flashed Booth the universal 'one minute' sign. "I guess that's my cue to go," I sighed, mildly disappointed. I'd been enjoying talking to the grad student. "It was great meeting you, Dr. Addy!" I said with an uncharacteristically bright smile to make sure he knew I was teasing him.

"I find I hope to see you again, as well," Zach replied with a nod of affirmation.

I grinned as I languidly sauntered back to Booth. "I made a new friend," I announced proudly, mostly just to annoy him.

"Yeah, good for you," Booth said sarcastically.


	3. Pilot, Part Two

Later that night, Booth had verified with me to make sure I didn't want an FBI escort home. However, I was more than happy to stay with them, since the option had been open to me. So, in the falling light of dusk, I was kneeling by Brennan and Zach over a human skeleton. Although I wasn't allowed to touch anything, the crime scene unit had made me wear latex gloves anyway. I was cool without touching. I have no problems with it, but if I demonstrated my expertise all at once, it might raise more questions than intended. Zach was taking pictures with a huge disco camera to put on file.

"The remains are wrapped in four-milled, flat poly-construction sheeting," Zach observed, deducing the material.

"PVC-coated chicken wire," I translated for Booth, who made a face at the grad student's offered information.

"It's weighted," Brennan stated simply. "That's why the body didn't surface during decomposition. The skeleton is complete, but the skull is in fragments."

"What else can you tell me about the victim?" Booth demanded, holding a little notebook and a pen from a little barber shop on Main Street.

"Not much," Brennan decided with an undertone of disappointment. I guess she wanted this over with. "She was a young woman, probably between 18 and 22."

"That's all?" Booth verified sarcastically.

"Tennis player," Brennan offered.

Booth made a face and gestured to the bones with a look of disgust. "How do you get 'pretty tennis player' out of that… yuck?" He finished for lack of a better word.

Zach didn't bother to correct Booth on the very unscientific term for the remains, instead answering his question without a fuss. "Epiphyses fusion gives age, pelvic bone shape gives sex…"

"And the bursitis in the shoulder has to be an athletic injury in someone that young," I finished with a shrug. All three of them looked to me in surprise. "What?" I defended. "I have unusual hobbies."

"Whatever," Booth shrugged, writing it off. "When did she die?"

"Eh," Brennan dictated, her eyebrows furrowed.

"Eh?" Booth repeated mockingly. "What does that even mean?"

Zach moved his position so that he could get more pictures of the remains from a different angle. "It means wait until our bug and slime guy takes a look."

"No clothing," I observed, leaving the rest of the sentence open to implications. The skeleton was completely barren, with no trace signs of tailored fabric.

"You know, in my line of work, no clothes usually means a sex crime," Booth informed us with an air of smug finality. He thought he had this one down.

"In my line of work," Brennan contradicted. "It could also mean the victim favored natural fibers."

Zach didn't look up from his camera, but without any attitude, tacked on to Brennan's sentence, "Your suit, for example, will outlast your bones by decades."

Booth brought the notepad and pen down to his sides and looked down at his suit with a grimace before looking up, giving Zach a look that suggested he really hadn't needed to know that. If Zach knew Booth was giving him that look, the intern didn't show it.

"Collect silt, three meters' radius, to a depth of ten centimeters," Brennan ordered Zach, her voice lacking a firm tone that most people usually carried when they demanded things. I guess that shows that Zach is a good boy who does as he's told. Brennan looked up to Booth and told him, "FBI forensics team can take the plastic and the chicken wire. We'll take the rest."

* * *

><p>I groaned loudly while I was waiting with Booth to be called into the FBI Deputy Director's office. "Dude, why couldn't I have gone to the Jeffersonian with Dr. Brennan? Why do I have to stay with you and listen to you get reprimanded?" I whined, ignoring the agitated looks I was getting from the other agents in the room.<p>

"Because you are under my protection, and you don't even know the squints," Booth said with an exasperated tone. It was fair; I'd asked a dozen times.

"But Dr. Brennan is more awesome than you!" I argued. "She was more respectful, too. I mean, she's the awesome scientist who beat up an agent from Homeland Security, you're just the pest that took me away from my job."

"Agent Booth!" Someone called from the next room. Booth ignored me and stood up, going into the office. After a moment, I gave an exaggerated sigh and trudged through after.

The same man that had told Booth I was under his care was sitting at a desk. Booth took a seat in a chair across from the director and I stayed standing, looking around the room at the awards and certificates hung on the walls.

"So," the director said, peering at Booth indecisively, like he didn't know what to make of the special agent. "You guaranteed a squint a field role in an active murder investigation."

I really wish that they would stop calling the scientists 'squints'. It's derogatory and rude.

"Yes, sir," Booth nodded respectfully while I mused over a certificate of appreciation.

"The one that wrote the book," the director clarified.

"Yes, sir."

The director gave him a skeptical, calculating look. "Thought you said that she wouldn't work with you anymore."

Booth didn't meet the director's eyes, even as he listed off the beneficial effects Brennan had had on a previous case. "Well, the last case we worked, she provided a description of the murder weapon and the murderer, but I didn't give her much credence."

"Why not?" The director asked, an eyebrow arched in curiosity.

Booth looked off to the side and his tone was quiet and submissive. "Because she did it by looking at the victim's autopsy x-rays."

The director snorted. "Well I wouldn't have given her much credence, either."

Booth looked back to the director at the negative attitude he expressed towards Brennan. "Turns out she was right on both, plus the pond victim? Brennan gives me the age, sex, and favorite sport."

Actually, I told him about the sport, but I'll let Brennan take the credit. She would have gotten to it if I hadn't, anyway.

The director laughed like this was an amusing game. "Which is?" He asked, humoring Booth.

"Tennis," I answered distantly, reading another paper on the wall.

The director stopped laughing, surprised it hadn't just been a joke. "She's good," he said in awe.

"She's amazing," Booth fervently agreed. "If the only way I can get her back to my side is to bring her out in the field, I'm willing."

"Well, squints like to stay safe, back at the lab," the director theorized. "What's with Brennan?"

Booth sighed and fiddled with his hands. "Remember a case back in the early 90's, a couple goes missing on the interstate and the car was found at a rest stop?"

"Yeah," the director confirmed. "Upstate New York, upstanding citizens, nobody found anything."

"Those are Brennan's parents," Booth confessed quietly.

The director narrowed his eyes, thinking hard about this. "Fine," he finally consented. "She's on you. Take a squint out in the field, she's your responsibility."

"What about me?" I asked suddenly, seeing a way to worm my way into the operation. The way my life was going, this would be the only time I could ever play the part of a hero, the only time I could ever play a part of getting a murderer behind bars, which was something I'd aspired of doing for years before reality hit me in the face.

The director raised his eyebrows at me and started to laugh breathily, but I kept my expression stony and serious. The director's eyes widened when he realized I wasn't kidding. "And you are?"

"I'm the girl who can take care of herself, but who your bureau now has to deal with because you put me under the care of an idiot who can't be respectful of people who have jobs working in the scientific community because he feels intimidated by their intelligence," I said rather sassily but dead serious. "So now, because of that decision, I have all the information I need to go along in this investigation because I haven't been allowed to leave his side for more than ten minutes. I'm seventeen, I graduated high school early, and I have a high IQ. You'll find, if you bother to look at my government file, that my grades were outstanding and I did multiple extracurricular activities, often versing in forensics and law enforcement. I speak several languages, so obviously I'm quite intellectually capable, and I've attended college seminars on various fields before I was a teenager." It was unusual, but it was how I had wanted to spend my time. It had started as a means of staying away from the house I resided in; away from the cruel 'siblings' and the selfish 'parents', then became something I was genuinely interested in. The information may benefit me well.

The director surveyed me for several tense moments, and Booth had his eyes closed like he was waiting for a bomb to drop. I think I caught him mouthing a prayer from the Catholic Bible. So he's Catholic. Good to know, I guess, although I don't see how it will benefit me, considering I'm Atheist, but who knows?

The director finally looked away from me. "Take her into the field with you if you care to," the director finally told Booth. "She's got one hell of an attitude but she's got wit, I'll give her that."

"She's also got a name," I heatedly interjected.

The director glanced at me, then back at Booth. "There we go, attitude," he said like I'd proved a point. He leaned back in his chair. "You're free to go."

Booth stood quickly and bowed his head. "Thank you, sir," he said hurriedly.

Outside the office, I fist pumped victoriously behind Booth's back. _Yes!_

* * *

><p>The next morning, I'd had to sleep in a hotel with an FBI guard at the door at all times. It was annoying, but it was worth it to get to catch a murderer with THE Dr. Temperance Brennan. Ugh, and Booth, but right now I'm still a bit pissed off at him.<p>

Eight o'clock saw Booth escorting me into an office in the Jeffersonian Institution's Medico-Legal lab. It was hard to contain my excitement. I heard of this place in newspapers, sometimes passed it on the bus, but… wow. It was incredible, practically a tangible heaven for anyone interested in science. A raised platform of metal had examination tables and and desks scattered around by the silver rails with various equipment on them. A large terrace led up to offices on a level higher in the domed building. Off to the side of the room led to a laboratory, and down a couple hallways were more offices.

This office in particular was very technology-based. The room was lit dimly, but I got the feeling it was on purpose. The walls had paintings, sketches, collages, and drawings carefully posted around, making this office feel cozy and homely. There was a red couch and a squared off space towards the back of the office, but we were sort of in the middle. There was a large square pedestal rising up from the floor, and in the same location on the ceiling, about a foot of the same brown, polished material came down. Between the two was a glowing orange-yellow grid for holograms. Whoa. That's really all I can say.

Brennan, Booth and I were all standing at various points around the large holographic projector. Also with us was Zach, a woman, and a man, the last two of which I'd never seen before. The woman looked a mix of European and Asian, with high cheekbones and yet some definitely European features. Her complexion was creamy and smooth, her skin a light cream color. She had sharp chocolate eyes and held a computer pad, which she was tapping data onto. Her brown hair was curly and smooth, part of it falling to either side of her face and over her shoulders. She wore fashionable, stylistic clothing, with expensive brands. I think I recognized her shirt from an advertisement for _J Crew. _She wore high heels (obscenely high heels) and a bit of makeup. She had on pink lipstick and dark mascara and eye shadow. I think Brennan had called her Angela.

The strange man was kind of short (no offense, dude, short people can be cool, too). He had wildly curly hair, longer than most men's but shorter than Zach's, and a short beard. He had keen blue eyes and a chronic 'mad scientist' air about him. He was white-skinned. He was, along with Brennan and Zach, wearing a lab coat with the Medico-Legal lab emblem sewn onto the front, with his first initial and last name embroidered on in thread. _J. Hodgins_. I filed that away for later use. Hodgins? Hodgins, as in, the Hodginses of the Cantilever Foundation?

"Now that we're all here," Brennan announced as Hodgins took his place by the generator and next to Zach. They might be friends, I mused. "I've been told I should start by saying 'good morning'," she said unsurely, looking to Angela for approval.

Angela gave a slightly pained smile to her. "It would have been better if you'd been more confident about it," she told her. "But, yeah. Good morning, everyone."

"Yo," I said with a short wave.

"Who's the kid?" Hodgins asked without warning, looking to Booth for an explanation as to my presence.

"She's Holly Kirkland, Booth's temporary legal charge as she's under federal protection," Zach answered raptly.

I rolled my eyes. No one let me talk for myself here. "Call me Holly," I invited. "The FBI have signed me onto this case as per request and due to the convenience for Booth."

"Hey, Holly," Hodgins greeted, shaking my hand around the side of the hologram generator. "Jack Hodgins. I'm the bug and slime guy."

"Angela Montenegro, sweetie," the Eurasian woman smiled at me. "Call me Angela or Ange."

I smiled back at her. The employees of this lab seemed generally friendly. Booth was the rudest person here – well, aside from myself. I suppose I can be pretty nasty when I want to be, but as long as these guys were nice, then I'd play nice, too.

"This computer program," Angela started to explain. "Which I designed by the way," she added as an afterthought, giving herself credence. "Patent pending, accepts a full array of digital input, processes it, and then projects it as a three-dimensional holographic image."

"Okay," Booth nodded.

"Brennan reassembled the skull and applied tissue markers," Angela stated, starting up the program.

Brennan tilted her head to the side slightly as the basic shape of a human skull was created in the glowing space. "Her skull was badly damaged, but racial indicators, cheekbones dimensions, nasal arch, and occipital measurements suggest African American."

Angela added in the desired changes and information to the machine and the tissue markers were highlighted. Quickly, the skull morphed into an expressionless face of an African American young adult. Cool.

"And we have our victim," Angela announced proudly. The digital reconstruction rotated around in the perimeters of the holograph grid.

"That's awesome," I said with approval. Booth seemed to share my thoughts; he stretched out a hand to the hologram and his fingers passed through. It was a little creepy, to be honest.

Brennan reached out and batted his hand away. "Ange," she instructed, "Rerun the program substituting Caucasian values."

The image altered; the difference was small, but very noticeable. It gave the woman a less African look and greatly affected the outcome. "Does she look familiar to anyone else?" I asked, frowning. I could have sworn I'd seen that face somewhere, or at least one that looked incredibly like it…

"No," Hodgins reported.

So, she wasn't familiar as an African American, but she seemed a little familiar as a dark-skinned European… "Angela," I started, surprising everyone in the room. "Could you split the difference and make it mixed race?"

Considering my age and lack of official credentials, I was surprised when Angela picked up the stylus again and started changing values. "Lenny Kravitz or Vanessa Williams?" She asked to clarify.

I considered this for a second before answering, "I'm leaning more towards Kravitz."

Angela changed the input accordingly and the image changed once more. The girl was Eurasian, with brown skin but the bone fusion of a European. Her eyes were sort of black; reconstructions couldn't tell what color they were. Booth rocked backwards on his heels in surprise. "Angela, reduce tissue depth over the cheekbones to the jaw line," Brennan requested. As it changed for a final time, Booth looked from the hologram to the reconstructed and marked skull sitting on a table a few feet away before looking back to the holographic image, looking like someone had slapped him with a dead fish.

Angela paused. "Is that who I think it is?"

"The girl who had the affair with the Senator!" Hodgins declared triumphantly. Wow. He's a lot more excited about that than he should be.

"Commendable work, Holly," Brennan praised.

Booth swallowed dryly before quietly putting his thoughts in with theirs. "Her name is Cleo Louise Eller. Only daughter to Ted and Sharon Eller. Last seen approximately 9:00 pm, April sixth, 2003, leaving the Cardio Deluxe Gym on K street. She didn't even make it to her car."

"Pretty good memory," Brennan commented in surprise.

Booth shoved his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, well, it's my job to find her."

"Well, in that case, when's the party?" I asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, congratulations on your success," Hodgins agreed.

Booth looked back to the skull, his eyes seeming sad. "This wasn't how I wanted it to end."

* * *

><p>"Cleo Eller isn't just some missing girl," Booth scowled, hitting the heel of his hand with Eller's file folder. While he was being a right misery, the rest of us had ordered fast food delivery, and now we were eating out sandwiches on the large, wide front steps of the Jeffersonian Institution. Booth stayed standing, hovering around and whining about the identity of the girl, while the rest of us talked about less gory things. So far, I knew that Angela was an artist who worked reconstructions and 3D scenarios for the Institution, Brennan was thinking of writing another book ("Can't wait!"), and Hodgins had three PhDs, all in different biological fields, but he went by entomologist.<p>

"Yeah," Hodgins, who I was quickly learning was a conspiracy theorist, agreed with a satisfied smile. "She was a Senate intern who was boinking Senator Allen Bethlehem."

Booth glared at the entomologist roughly. "I was working secondary in that case, and we couldn't prove it."

"The FBI's job is to save lives," I pointed out carelessly. "And uncover lies that affect the civilians. You couldn't manage one, so what makes you think you could do the other?"

Booth glared at me, but his underlying curiosity won out. "And how did you recognize her before she even had her own face, huh?"

I shrugged. "I recognized the underlying architecture of her features. The rest is just detail. You can wear a standard FBI uniform or you can rebel society by wearing stupid belt buckles and silly socks." I held my arms up helplessly as Booth gave me a wary look, like he knew I was about to insult him. "Either way, you still look like something. That something, in this case, happens to be a fool, but you get the idea."

Zach leaned forward to speak to Hodgins and I at once. "I'm not an expert, but shouldn't he be happier?"

"Oh, no, believe me, I'm happy," Booth lied.

"He's also a horrible liar," I told Zach.

"He's not happy because Senator Bethlehem chairs the Senate overseeing the FBI," Hodgins crowed, happy that Booth was finally under control by his own case.

"You seem happy to me," Angela noted.

Booth glared at us all, trying to be intimidating but only really getting that effect on Zach. "I need this kept quiet."

"Ha!" Hodgins exclaimed, pointing up at him. "Cover up!"

Booth rolled his eyes and starting speed walking down the stairs. I sighed and picked up my sandwich wrapper, tossing it in the trash at the bottom of the stairs. "Good aim," Angela commented.

"Thanks," I muttered, lifting my bag off of the stairs by Hodgins and following Booth. Brennan was hot on my heels.

"Paranoid conspiracy theorists," Booth grumbled when we caught up to him.

Brennan got up to his side while I followed along behind them, looking around the Jeffersonian gardens. They were very well cultivated. "So what do you do first," Brennan asked curiously. "Confront the Senator?"

Booth winced. "Listen, Bones, I know…"

"Don't call me Bones!" Brennan sharply interrupted.

"I know we talked about you coming out in the field and all…"

Brennan's eyes narrowed when she caught his meaning. "Ugh!" She groaned. "You rat bastard!"

Booth put his hands up like he thoughts she might hit him. "A case this big and the director is going to create a special investigation. If I line all my ducks up in a row, I could maybe, maybe head it up."

Brennan kept up with him, but walked sideways as she tried to get in front of him. "I don't know what that means-" That could be her catchphrase. "But I think I could be a duck!"

I snickered. "That's not exactly what he means, Dr. B."

"You're not a duck, okay?" Booth was quick to dismiss. "On this one we stick to the book. Cops on the street, squints in the lab."

Brennan finally pulled ahead of him and stopped. Booth had to pause in order to not run straight into her. She crossed her arms arrogantly. "Well in that case, the Jeffersonian will be issuing a press release identifying the girl in the pond."

Booth's jaw dropped slightly. "If you do that, I'm a dead duck." Wow, they're really taking that expression for a long walk. "What are you trying to do?"

"Blackmail you," Brennan said with a smirk.

"Blackmail a Federal Agent?"

"Yes."

"I don't like it."

I laughed at the incredulity of the statement. "It's blackmail; you're not supposed to like it!"

Booth scowled at Brennan. "Fine. You're in."

* * *

><p>An hour later brought us right back in director Cullen's office. I really was starting to get familiar with this place… not a good thing, in my opinion. "You're certain it's Cleo Eller," Cullen confirmed for a second time.<p>

"The profile hit it on the nail," I said simply. "Age, race, height, plus the fissures in the clavicle and humerus fit for tennis, which Cleo Eller played in college."

"Talk to me about the Senator," the director ordered Booth.

Booth passed a photograph of Senator Bethlehem over the table to his superior. "Cleo Eller, the victim, worked for Senator Bethlehem…" he trailed off when the director's eyes landed on the picture.

"It was reported that they were involved sexually," Brennan added.

"We couldn't confirm that," Booth corrected hastily.

"Oh, Bethlehem's a hound, everybody knows that," Cullen said casually. He accepted another picture from Booth. "The boyfriend?" He asked.

"Ken Thompson," Booth nodded.

"Thompson's still Bethlehem's aid." Cullen told us, having apparently looked into it already. "Thompson keeps Bethlehem's calendar. No way the Senator has an affair the Thompson doesn't know about. No sexual relationship, no motive. What about the, ah, nutcase?" I scowled. I hated his mannerisms. He was so rude to everyone NOT in the FBI and he easily wrote off key suspects.

Booth handed the director yet another laminated paper with the smiling face of a guy with curly black hair. "Oliver Laurier. A restraining order was filed against him on charges for stalking."

"What's your first move?" Cullen asked inquisitively.

Booth bowed his head. "I'd like to inform the Ellers that we found their daughter."

Cullen dropped the paper and it floated down to the top of his desk. "It's better to keep this quiet. It's been, what, two years? What's another few days?"

I scoffed, appalled. "They are her family! They have more of a right to know what happened to her than the FBI does! Why deny them closure when they've been waiting for years already? That's rude and insolent!"

Cullen fixed me with a hard glare. I didn't back down. Booth cleared his throat, regaining control of the situation. "With all due respect, sir, I've come to know the family pretty well, especially the Major, and two years is a hell of a long time in my book."

Brennan jumped up, fighting for our cause. "I'll have details of cause of death by this afternoon."

Booth nodded to Brennan. "Then that's where we'll get started."

* * *

><p>I reflected on what had happened in the SUV, mulling the information over. The Ellers led us to their sitting room, where Booth motioned for Brennan and I to share the small sofa while he took the armchair across from the rocking chair and La-Z-Boy where Mr. and Mrs. Eller were. Hodgins had called Brennan. He'd gotten an identification on the particulates in Cleo's skull. They were rolled steel – like from a sledgehammer, for instance -, concrete, and diatomaceous Earth. Even though the name was fancy, it was really common and didn't tell us much. It was used for so many things – even insecticide – that it wouldn't be much help in narrowing down where Cleo Eller was murdered.<p>

Mr. and Mrs. Eller were in tears. Mrs. Eller had her hands over her face. "You're – positive it's our Cleo," Mr. Eller confirmed, his voice choked and raspy.

"We established 22 matching points of comparison-" Brennan started. I flinched. I'll be the first in line to say I'm not the most sensitive person, but I knew that that is NOT how you tell someone that, yes, we're sure your daughter's dead.

Booth gave Brennan a stern look. "Yes. We're certain." I said instead. "We're very sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. Eller."

"Did he do it?" Mr. Eller asked, leaning forward to Booth. "The Senator. One military man to another."

Booth looked genuinely regretful as he had to reply, "Major Eller, we can't discuss the investigation in any way."

Mrs. Eller took her hands away from her face. "Can you at least tell us if our daughter suffered?" She asked me with a pleading look. I was surprised she even acknowledged me as working on the case, but henceforth, Booth had said he can't tell them an answer to a question and Brennan was… well. She was Brennan.

"Given our findings, it's most likely that Cleo would have died instantly. She wouldn't have felt anything," I said softly. I wasn't sure if I was lying or not. Yes, she would have died instantly, but that's after the fact. Would I feel being hit in the head with a sledgehammer to death before I actually had a chance to die? Or would I go into shock and not feel anything? Or would the nerves even have enough to time to respond?... Wow, I need to think about something less morbid.

"Thank you," Mr. Eller told me, looking relieved.

"Mrs. Eller," Brennan started. "Can you tell us what Cleo wore around her neck?"

"Her father's Bronze Star," Mrs. Eller recalled nostalgically. "Ted won it in the first Gulf War, then he gave it to her for luck," she choked on the last word, dissolving into a mess of tears. Booth and I exchanged looks, then looked to Brennan.

We excused ourselves and Booth offered them his card. Outside the Eller residence, by the SUV, Brennan started voicing her complaints of being silenced. "Those people deserved the complete truth!"

"Dr. Brennan, their daughter was murdered. They deserve not to have to listen to the science behind our discoveries. It makes it harder," I told her softly.

"But there will be an inquest report," Brennan warned.

"Which they won't read, because they don't want to, especially because toward the end, Cleo and her parents weren't even speaking," Booth revealed with a grim expression.

"They told you that?" Brennan's body language radiated surprise.

Booth flipped his keys up in the air and caught them effortlessly, turning to face her. "You know, getting information out of live people is a lot different than getting information out of a pile of bones. You have to offer up something of yourself first."

"What exactly did you do in the military?" Brennan asked, testing out his words.

Booth tossed his hands up in exasperation. "See? See what you did right there, Bones? You asked a personal question without offering anything personal in return. And since I'm not a skeleton, you get zilch. Sorry," he finished, without any real apologetic tone.


	4. Pilot, Part Three

Well, it took a lot of pleading, and a bit of annoying, and a dash of exasperation from Booth, a word from Brennan in my favor, and a comment about tight security in the Jeffersonian from Zach, but Booth had finally allowed me away from him. Now I was technically under Brennan's watch, but it was much more enjoyable because I'm not mad at her for arresting me. Plus… you know… she's awesome. And Zach's my friend! So, yeah. I'm happy.

Cleo Eller's remains were laid out on the examination table on the metal platform. I wasn't allowed to do much; they didn't know how much I knew, and I haven't told them. Zach and Brennan were cataloguing injuries and such, while I was allowed latex gloves and power of passing tools when they were requested. Mostly I just ended up giving Brennan an evidence bag, which Zach took to Hodgins quickly.

It was still cool.

Brennan was observing the cranium while Zach was searching the metatarsals for stress fractures that could provide some clue as to where she'd been via particulates. I looked along the humorous curiously, scanning for anything unusual. Nope. I scanned down the radius, ulna, and phalanges, waiting for something to leap out at me. "There!" I declared triumphantly, pointing at the finger bones. "There's odd marks on the distal phalanges."

"There are stab marks here," Zach said, pointing towards more bones. "Nothing I've ever seen before," he added, craning his neck to see what I was pointing out.

Hodgins came into the room and immediately began talking. "In a nutshell; anxious, depressed, and nauseous."

"Take a sick day," Brennan said distantly as she set down the cranium to come look at the marking.

Hodgins rolled his eyes. "Not me! Cleo Eller. Pupal casings show she was on Lorazepam, Chloradiazepoxide, and Meclizine Hydrochloride."

"Sounds like she was miserable," I commented. "Nausea."

Brennan's eyes narrowed. "Zach, show me those bone fragments again."

Zach set down the tibia he'd been examining softly on the exam table before crossing to the computer. He pulled up an enlarged, blown-up image of small bones.

"Is that-?" I started. The bones were definitely the right shape… "Malleus, incus, and stapes." I looked to Hodgins. "Cleo Eller was pregnant. That's why she was taking so much medicine!"

"Fetal remains…" Zach trailed off, casting his eyes downward almost sadly.

"She wasn't very far along," Brennan observed. "Zach, can you try to get a DNA reading? Maybe we can prove paternity, however I'm not too optimistic. Let's hope there's enough genetic material to test."

Hodgins shook his head in disbelief as Zach collected the fetal bones and started off to the equipment to get a DNA test. "This Senator, ah, he is smart! He gets an intern pregnant and then murder her when it threatens his career, and he has the connections to get away with it."

Brennan frowned. "I hate it when you make paranoia plausible. It's like sliding off a cliff."

"Special Unit?" Hodgins scoffed. "No way your FBI pal heads it up unless the dark powers in charge are convinced he knows where his political bread is buttered. Either way, this is where this investigation ends." He took his paper report and left the platform, back to his lab.

After he was out of earshot, I looked to Brennan. "Is he always such a bundle of joy?"

"Joy is an emotion and not a tangible substance, therefore there can be no such thing as a bundle of it."

"Right. Sorry. My bad."

* * *

><p>Brennan and I stood side by side, with Booth off a few feet away from us. We were in the Hart office building of the U.S. Senate. It's helpful to do this when we live in the same city as Congress, the White House, et cetera. Thompson, Eller's boyfriend, and the Senator himself were facing us in much the same fashion that we were them.<p>

"I'm a little confused as to why the director of the FBI would send you to speak to the Senator instead of coming himself," Thompson told me, doing a lousy job at concealing contempt. "I mean, how old are you? Twelve?"

Surprisingly enough, Brennan was at my defense. "Probably because she's the one who identified the fact that Cleo Eller was pregnant." As an afterthought, she added, "And her correct age is seventeen."

"You can tell the girl was pregnant from her skeleton?" Senator Bethlehem chuckled like it was a funny joke.

I glared at him. "Don't be stupid, that would be impossible. However, we did find fetal bones."

"The only question now, Senator, is which one of you is the father?" Brennan arched an eyebrow at Eller's alleged boyfriend and "friend with benefits". "Are you willing to submit to a DNA test?"

Thompson closed his eyes and shook his head before he turned to Bethlehem. "You know what, given the sensitivity, don't say anything on the subject without your attorney present. That's my advice."

Bethlehem gave Brennan and I condescending looks. "Advice I intend to take," he said, still laughing. He turned around to Thompson, taking a few steps in another direction. "Ken, we have a vote to get to."

The Senator spat some gun out into a trash can on his way past. Brennan pulled an evidence bag from her messenger bag and ran to the trash can, retrieving the gum. Ew… but necessary.

Brennan wouldn't have been noticed if her dress shoes hadn't clicked on the tile when she ran. The Senator turned around and squinted at her, confused by her seemingly weird actions. "Um, heh, what are you doing?"

Brennan sealed the evidence bag even as she spoke. "Saliva, say from chewing gum, is an excellent source of DNA. I intend to compare it to the DNA in the fetal bones."

"You need a warrant for that," the Senator announced, slightly angry, as Brennan and I smiled triumphantly at each other and started out the door.

Thompson grabbed at my arm to stop us from leaving with the DNA sample. Before I had a chance to threaten to sue him for harassment, Brennan turned on him, grabbing his wrist and holding on as she contorted his arm in order for her to elbow him in the gut. Thompson dropped to the floor limply, moaning in pain.

"Thanks," I told her, feeling a bit slaphappy that my role model seemed to be showing favoritism to me. "Nice moves!"

"You are welcome. I try," she nodded.

As we walked out, I turned and walked backwards, trusting Brennan to tell me if I was going to run into anything. "If we have any further questions, we'll be in touch!"

* * *

><p>Later that day brought us back to Cullen's office. Oh, joy. He was very pissed. Well, I'm proud in saying I helped play a part in that. "When you work for the FBI, Dr. Brennan, you're a Federal Agent, government property. I own you." Okay, so he was mostly ticked at Brennan, considering all I did was be a smartass, and if there was a law against that, we wouldn't have enough un-convicted people to guard one jail, forget a whole world full of them.<p>

"I'm not certain that's accurate, sir," Brennan said, not letting him boss her around.

"It's not. Slavery was abolished decades ago," I asserted.

"Well how's this for accurate?" He seethed, leaning over his desk. "I could place you under arrest on a federal charge right now for uttering threats against a United States Senator."

"What?..." Brennan was taken by surprise, so I felt the need to jump in.

"Review the tapes," I invited coolly. "No one threatened Senator Bethlehem at all – although he would have deserved it. He was being a moron."

Cullen rounded on me. "You! You're lucky you're a minor or I'd have you charged, too. You were under guidelines directed by common sense not to hinder this investigation!"

I raised my eyebrows, not intimidated in the least. "Aw," I pouted mockingly. "You used to like my attitude. Like you said; I'm a minor. All I did was be a bitch. I might as well have gone to London and pranked the Queen's guards and try to get them to do something. If people were arrested for stupid stunts like that, there would be no civilians in the city of London."

"They were your responsibility!" Cullen said, going back to Booth when he couldn't argue with me. I was a sassy brat, yeah, but I knew not to break the laws unless it was a necessity. Getting the Senator pissed off was just for kicks.

"Yes, sir," Booth said submissively.

Cullen sent us all dirty looks before holding down a button on his phone set and speaking into the intercom. "Send in Special Agent First." He let go of the button, freeing himself to continue throwing a fit. "I warned you about taking squints out to the field but you vouched for her, said she wouldn't screw up!"

"Yes, sir."

"She accosted a Senator, assaulted his aid, that counts as screwing things up!"

Alarmed, Brennan exclaimed, "No! No! Booth didn't know I was going to see the Senator, I wanted to get a sample of his DNA."

"Exactly," the director sent Booth a dirty look.

"The aid got what was coming to him," I added. "He assaulted me first. Here, see!" I rolled up my shirt sleeve. Luckily for us, Thompson had sharp nails and he'd grabbed my arm with enough force to scratch and leave red marks on my skin. I showed off the scraped patch of skin to the director.

Cullen's eyes narrowed, but before he could throw any more accusations, Agent First entered the room, standing with stiff posture and waiting by the door. Cullen threw us all warning looks. "Tomorrow morning, I'm announcing the formation of a special unit to investigate the murder of Cleo Eller, at which time your investigation will be officially terminated." He glared at Booth. "You will not head the new unit."

Booth inhaled a long breath and spoke without bothering to hide his disdain. "Congratulations, Patrick."

"No hard feelings," First said.

"Right."

"I need the complete case files in the morning."

"Of course," Booth nodded tightly. "They'll be ready."

"Thank you, Agent First," the director dismissed.

I was thinking about something to throw in the director's face for good measure as we left, and thankfully, it came to me. As we stood from our chairs, I shrugged carelessly. "At least Dr. Brennan found out that Senator Bethlehem was having sex with Cleo."

"I did?" Brennan whispered to me in surprise.

I did my best to look bored as Cullen's attention was piqued. "Report said there wasn't enough DNA in the fetal bones to determine paternity," he pointed out, but nonetheless, he wasn't completely writing me off.

"Yeah, but he didn't know that," I smirked. "He didn't want Dr. Brennan to take that gum, so he's hiding something."

Cullen gave me a level look. "Miss Kirkland, when you are released from our protection, I suggest you go back to your bar shifts, and get used to being there."

I raised my eyebrows. "I already am, otherwise I'd be a lousy employee, but I'm not fired yet, am I?" I asked arrogantly. This guy just pushed all of my buttons.

"Come on, Holly," Booth muttered, putting an arm over my shoulder and urging me to come with him. It wasn't weird. Being chewed out by the director had seemed to give the three of us a sense of unity as we got to the point that we'd all gotten ourselves in trouble in the pursuit of answers so that a man could be punished for murder, which was something we all believed in. Aside from that, Booth's actions were more paternal than anything, and, not having had a good father, I didn't mind it that much. I'd drown myself before I admitted that aloud, though.

"You okay?" Booth asked Brennan and I when we were out of earshot and in the hallway.

"Don't be nice to us after we got you in trouble," I scoffed, laughing a little despite myself.

"Your heart was in the right place," Booth said definitively.

Brennan shook her head in denial of his words. "No, I'm not a heart person, you're a heart person. I'm a brain person. You vouched for me?"

"Forget it," Booth sighed.

"No, I won't," Brennan told him seriously. She paused. "Do you two think it was the Senator?"

I winced, tilting my head both ways in a noncommittal way. "Well, the Senator's not exactly celibate, but he's not killed any of his other interns. I think our best bet right now is the stalker guy."

"Kid's got a point," Booth agreed.

"You want to check him out?" Brennan offered. "We can, I don't know, what do you call it – roost him?"

I tried not to laugh. "_Rouse_," I corrected.

"Rouse," Brennan repeated. "Well, the murderer snatched a Bronze Star from Cleo's neck, so…"

"Right," I nodded, getting her point. "Obsessional felons usually keep souvenirs of their victims."

"How do you know this?" Booth asked, surprised.

I looked down. "I read a lot," I said vaguely, not wanting to admit that I did so because it was the closest I could get to actually doing what I wanted with my life. It was one thing to know it for myself. To say it to others just felt like it would make it invariable.

"Right, okay, you read a lot," Booth repeated. "Must read one hell of a book collection. We've got twelve hours before this case is over and we're off it, so let's go rouse."

"We?" I questioned, not expecting that. Booth seemed pretty independent, and he and I hadn't been the best of buddies since we met. Brennan seemed to be constantly butting heads with him.

"We're all in this one together, like it or not," Booth said simply.

"I find I like it when we work together, it provides for an instinctual desire of companionship and we appear to have been making headway," Brennan shared.

I smiled softly to myself. We had companionship in each other, according to Brennan. That wasn't really something I'd had before… I could go for it. "Alright, we. We're a team," I consented.

* * *

><p>Oliver Laurier had a pretty nice-sized house considering he'd had charges pressed for stalking. "He looks like he's got a pretty big garden," I said, taking note of the size of the picket fence around the house. "I'll go around through the back in case he's doing yard work."<p>

"Good plan," Booth nodded. "I'll make an agent of you yet. Bones and I will take the front door."

"Don't call me Bones!"

I choked back a snicker, taking the stepping-stone route to the gate of the fence while Brennan and Booth walked up the driveway. When I opened the gate and stepped through, I found it was pretty clear that this wasn't garden. It was just a bunch of overgrown lawn. I rolled my eyes. Of course. What had I been thinking? I headed for the door at the back porch, which was unlocked, so I let myself in.

I was in the back, and straight ahead was the sitting room, which the door opened to. Oliver Laurier had his back to me and had the door open. "Mr. Laurier, we have a warrant to search your apartment," Brennan started.

Oliver slammed the door in her face and turned to run. Not a second later, Booth reopened the door. Oliver, who hadn't seen me, ran right to me before processing I was actually there. He tried to stop and go the other way. I snatched his flailing wrist from the air and twisted it around behind his back, grasping his shoulder firmly to keep him in place.

Booth smirked. "Don't run, Oliver," he advised.

"Yeah, it makes you look bad," I told him dutifully.

* * *

><p>Oliver was taking his time to thoroughly read the warrant. Booth was looking around the house, not looking for much aside from Eller's star. "Agent Booth is under the impression that you may have something that is pertinent to a case he is working on," Brennan told Oliver, trying to engage him in conversation so that maybe he would slip up and reveal something.<p>

"You're looking for a Bronze Star?" Oliver looked up from the warrant, looking confused. "Like the one that Cleo wore?"

"Exactly like that one, Mr. Laurier," Brennan confirmed.

"I don't have it."

I exhaled slowly, walking around. "Sometimes stalkers retain keepsakes."

Booth picked up a little booklet from a bowl full of them on the mantle. "What the hell are these things, anyway?" He asked derisively. They were pocket-sized, leather-bound, and didn't look like they were worth much.

"Miniature lives of the Saints," Oliver looked up to the sky and bowed in respect to the God and lives he worshipped. "I hand them out."

Booth turned it over in his hands and, when it wielded nothing of use, he tossed it up in the air. "Heads up, kid," he called, dismissing the booklet.

I caught it during its flight through the air with one hand. Snatching it up, I surveyed it critically before clasping my fingers around it possessively. This could, at the very least, provide evidence for the degraded paper Eller had had when her body was dumped in the pond. If it matched, then we'd have probable cause to arrest Laurier for murder.

"I hand them out for donations, I'm not a panhandler, help yourself," Laurier told Booth before rotating to observe me critically, a miniscule look of appreciation growing on his face. I shrugged it off as nothing; if I dwelled on it, I might shiver. It was slightly creepy. Okay, more than slightly. "I never stalked Cleo."

"Then why did she get a restraining order?" Brennan inquired skeptically.

Laurier closed his eyes and shook his head, bemused. "Okay, okay, no. First of all… no. Ken Thompson, her supposed boyfriend, got the restraining order with his box, the Senator, but Ken is only concerned with his job and his tropical fish. They colluded to ruin my reputation with this specious-"

"Then why'd you run from the warrant?" Booth drilled, interrupting him.

Laurier did a good job attempting to hide his dismay at Booth's presence. "My fight or flight response is heavily weighted toward flight. If there is anything I can do to help you catch Cleo's killer, just tell me."

"Full confession would be great!" Booth smiled brightly.

"I love Cleo," Laurier restated, aghast. "Why would I hurt her?"

I interrupted their argument. "Booth, Dr. Brennan, I think we're done here," I said, casting Laurier a glance. "If you don't mind, I'm going to keep one of these little books."

"Whatever you need, Miss," he said, a smile ghosting on his face. I rolled my eyes. Men. They're all pigs.

* * *

><p>Angela projected the data up and the hologram display started. "This is just a rough composite," she excused. "But you get the idea."<p>

Angela was showing me the display scenarios and recreation while the others worked. Booth and Brennan were discussing possible suspects or leads, after Brennan and Zach had told me the information I might need to help Angela reconstruct a scene. She herself had said that I had demonstrated enough intellect in the topic to come to a rational conclusion.

"So, the skull trauma wasn't the cause of death," I said, almost disappointed. That, at least, would have been done with quickly. "She was stabbed first. Somewhere between five and eight times. Zach said that it was most likely with a military issued K-bar knife."

The projector showed Eller being stabbed from behind by a tall silhouette. "And I just completed this rendering," the forensic artist said, watching with her lips pursed in concentration. "The defensive wounds to the bones of her hands suggest that it wasn't until the third of fourth penetration that…" her voice faded for a moment. "…that Cleo stopped fighting back."

Picking up on it, I tore my speculative gaze from the hologram scenario to look at Angela in concern. "Are you okay?" I asked.

She shook her head to herself, but said, "Yeah."

I let it go at that. I pointed out a specific moment when the projection replayed. "That's likely the fatal stab, right there."

"I believe the distinctive damage to her distal phalanges-" Angela shook her head slightly at me and gave me a look, so I revised my sentence. "-the damage to the tips of her finger bones, was caused by the murderer using the knife to remove her finger pads. The cranial suggests a hammer somewhere around twenty pounds struck her four to five times while her head was on a cement floor. That's our best explanation for the traces of cement and diatomaceous earth. But that means that this wasn't a crime of passion," I finished in confusion.

"Cleo never saw the first stab coming." Although the observation was clinical, Angela seemed to take solace in it. "It didn't arise out of an argument. So why smash her face, why whittle away her fingertips, why remove her clothing and her jewelry?"

"Sank her body, too," I added, not liking the intelligence that the felon was displaying. "The murderer put much more effort into obscuring her identity than he did in the actual murder."

"Hodgins said that the little book you got from the stalker matches the cellulose Cleo had in her hand when she first got to the lab," Angela informed me. "That was good thinking, by the way."

"So evidence was planted." I summarized. "The use of a military knife incriminates her father – Major Eller from the first Gulf War."

"Sound like any conniving Senator you know?" Angela asked rhetorically.

I sighed, blowing hair out of my eyes. "We can't declare war on a US Senator based on conjecture, however much I'd love to. Even if this is a logical recreation of events, based on solid evidence, it still can't be proved until we have the murderer and/or murder weapon."

"Yeah, it's no more valid than my gut," a new voice stated.

I turned. Booth was leaning against the doorway. "A good hypothesis withstands its testing. That's what makes it a good hypothesis," I challenged.

"It's not a hypothesis," Booth argued. "You have a dead girl and a United States Senator. This is exactly why kids don't belong in the FBI or science labs. You don't know anything about the real world."

My jaw dropped slightly and I scoffed, throwing my hands in the air. "You're right. I have no clue who my parents are, I've been in the foster system all my life, and I still don't have an actual family. I live in a bad part of town where I get in fights just to get to my residence without being raped or murdered. I work in a bar, and despite my outstanding credits from high school for managing to graduate way early, I still can't go to college because I have no financial security, which goes right back to having no family." Angela gaped slightly, taking a step back. Booth looked meek and chastened. And I didn't even mention the abuse I'd gone through at the hands of some of the foster families! "But who cares? I'm obviously a naïve little moron who's clueless about real life. Thanks for enlightening me."

Not giving him a chance to say anything, I shoved past him roughly and stalked out onto the balcony, headed for the stairs back to the ground level.

That's too bad. I thought we'd been working well together.

Whatever. It was just a badly-timed comment that wasn't completely thought through. I'd get over it. It hadn't meant to sting. It was just my bad luck that it did.


	5. Pilot, Part Four

When I'd asked where Brennan was, Hodgins had directed me down to a shooting range on a lower level. Shrouded in dim lighting was a stairwell that led down to a brightly-lit range with human figures hung in racks for targets. Brennan was wearing protective eyewear and a headset, shooting off a standard gun and getting accurate hits. Booth was already down there, but that wasn't necessarily bad. I knew he hadn't aimed to hurt my feelings; he had no way of knowing how I grew up. So I'd decided to let him get away with it. Besides, I'd spent some time talking with Hodgins while he worked to cool down.

"…Who knows better than you how fragile life can be?" Booth asked rhetorically.

"Maybe an Army Ranger sniper who became an FBI homicide investigator?" Brennan posed her question with a snippy tone.

"Ah." Booth nodded. "You looked me up, huh?" He pointed at the gun. "Do you mind?"

"Be my guest," Brennan invited, handing over the gun and moving the headset down around her neck.

"Thank you," Booth said, making a show of being gracious before firing a round at a new target. It was pretty lousy; when the results came up, he'd missed on each bullet.

"Were you any good at being a sniper?" Brennan laughed, seeing the disastrous results.

Booth didn't answer that question. "A sniper gets to know a little something about killers. Senator Bethlehem? He's no killer."

"And Oliver Laurier is?" I scoffed. He's nuts! No way he's strong or stable enough to emotionally manage murder without breaking down about it.

Booth changed the way he held the gun, putting the safety back on and gripping it by the barrel, holding it out to me. "Give it your best shot, kid," he told me, probably trying to make up for offending me earlier.

I took the gun and, unfamiliar with the model, I braced myself with a wide stance and held it with both hands as a precaution. I used to be in an archery club a few years ago at the local community center, and I'd actually been a pretty good shot, so I figured a gun wouldn't be too much different, so long as weight and backlash were accounted for. I aimed for the heart of the new target; the first bullet was a few inches off, so I readjusted my aim and fired the rest of the round. They all hit around the heart; even though only one or two were dead-on shots, all would have resulted in fatality if they were on an actual person.

"Nice, kid," Booth whistled. "The way I read Laurier, he's unhinged. That makes him dangerous."

"That'd be your gut telling you that, correct?" Brennan asked, amused.

"You know, homicides, they're not solved by scientists," Booth said, getting tired of her opposition to following leads based on emotion. "They're solved by guys like me asking a thousand questions a thousand times, catching people telling lies every time. You're great at what you do, Bones, but you don't solve murders. Cops do."

"I disagree with both of you," I informed them bluntly. "I don't think Laurier did it, but I don't think Bethlehem would, either. He strikes me as the type to get someone else to do his dirty work. Even if he is behind it, he's not who we need to catch first."

Booth turned to Brennan. "Isn't it annoying when children may actually be right?"

"So adolescents can solve murders and adult scientists cannot?" Brennan asked indignantly, missing the point entirely. "Cleo Eller was killed on a cement floor sprinkled with diatomaceous earth. Traces of her blood will still be in that cement. One of us is right, maybe neither of us. But if Bethlehem wasn't a Senator, you'd be right there in his basement, looking for that killing floor. You're afraid of him. Your hypothesis is that squints don't solve murders and cops do. Prove it. Be a cop."

Smirking, Brennan hung the headset up and put the glasses away on the shelf they went on. I handed the gun back to Booth. "That was badass!" I exclaimed, impressed with the anthropologist.

* * *

><p>Under Booth's instruction, I was lounging on the loveseat in his office in the FBI building and skimming through a book on prolific cold cases in recent history. It only went back to the mid-nineteenth century, but it had some of the popular ones; H. Holmes and the murder hotel, Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders, the Zodiac murderer and his coded messages. You get the idea.<p>

I wasn't sure why, but it was harder and harder to stay mad at Booth for arresting me. I suppose it wasn't his fault to begin with; he was just trying to find Davis' murderer. Sure, Davis was a lousy person, but even if it wasn't for him, the society deserved for the murderer to be caught, and if a seventeen year old girl from a bad neighborhood might be a lead in their case, then they should investigate. Not only that, but the more time I spent with him, I realized Booth wasn't actually that bad of a guy. Sure, he had flaws, but who doesn't? His arrogance and his rude comments spoke for themselves, but he was a good guy working to put the bad ones behind bars, and that made him okay in my book. Besides, he was doing his job protecting me when there might not even be a threat, even though it was inconveniencing him. Or maybe it was the feeling of protection itself that made me warm up to him. It was something I'd never really had, but was deciding I liked. The paternal way Booth had treated me after Brennan and I got him in trouble was welcoming.

I could tolerate being in his protection for a while – even if it meant I couldn't actually go to my residence without giving myself away, I had all I needed at the place I said I lived at, and the friendly way everyone at the Jeffersonian treated me was welcoming and refreshing. In my neighborhood, I'm reputable for being a… well, a bitch, to say it bluntly. They didn't know me as that, though, so it was the first time in a while I'd met someone and they didn't already have a pre-formed opinion of me. Angela had been surprisingly amiable with her reconstructions, allowing me to make suggestions when she had no reason to take my word for it. Zach had been hospitable and kind, to the extent that he knew how. He was very literal-minded, and he didn't quite understand social cues and verbal expressions, so he was trying. Hodgins was a very cheerful person. Even if he was into conspiracies, he was fun and lively person to be around, with a good nature and a high intelligence that balanced each other out. Brennan was pretty awesome, too, of course. I was thrilled that she seemed to like me, as well, if her abrupt protection of me from the Senator's aid was anything to go by, as well as her praise and her respectful acknowledgements.

While I reflected, Booth was leaning back in his chair, watching a home video of Eller and her parents on low volume. His elbow was against the arm of the task chair and his knuckles were propping up his chin, his eyes sad as he really absorbed who Eller had been and what had been taken away when she was murdered. I tried not to think about it too much, because I knew if I really thought about it, it would hurt me, too.

Someone knocked on the already-open door. I turned and straightened when I saw Brennan, closing the book and setting it on the coffee table when she came in and looked to see what Booth was watching.

"They look pretty happy, don't they?" Booth mused softly. "Otherwise they wouldn't turn on the camera, I guess."

Brennan cleared her throat. "Zach said you wanted to see me?"

"Is that something you don't like to talk about?" Booth asked, arching an eyebrow. "Families?" Booth shook his head slightly. "Temperance, partners, they share things, and it builds trust."

"Since when are we partners?" Brennan asked, testing the word out in confusion.

"I apologize for the assumption," Booth said dryly, stopping the home video and giving a document to the scientist.

"You got a warrant to search Bethlehem's place?" She looked up from the document in surprise.

"You were right," I told her. "If Bethlehem wasn't a Senator, the FBI would already have granted Booth a team to go to the basement to look for the kill site."

"But you're wrong," Booth added. "I was never afraid of that guy, and I'm not doing this because you're a genius. I'm doing this for Cleo."

* * *

><p>Outside the Senator's house, Brennan and I stood, watching Bethlehem, Thompson, and an officer conversing angrilycalmly on the front steps. I was sure I'd be seeing a few snaps of me in the paper – Brennan, a renowned scientist and authoress, and me, a teenage nobody from the ghetto district – were talking over a media crowd like equals. I'm sure the papers will have something bad to say, likely something along those lines. The media itself was like a three-ring circus, complete with the morons who thought that juggling a running chainsaw was a good idea and that nothing could possibly go wrong with their task. They thronged outside the black gates that Brennan and I had access inside of, so we weren't being shoved, but a few reporters or photographers managed to leak through the security cracks every once in a while.

Thompson held the warrant in his hands and said something, most likely reading it off. Bethlehem's anger only increased and he shouted something, but the crowd outside the Senator's gates was too loud for me to overhear the man's words.

Thompson said something else before storming down the stairs and coming to a stop in front of Brennan and I. "You're making a big mistake," he leered.

I arched an eyebrow, perfecting the art of keeping a cool demeanor. "Is that a threat, Mr. Thompson?"

Thompson shook his head in fury, running off to shoo another reporter off of the lawn. I looked over to Booth, who was in the middle of a fiery argument with Agent First, the officer Cullen had put in charge of the case who would take over in only a few hours.

I felt eyes watching me, and not the annoying media kind. I turned around sharply and found a familiar but unwelcome man pressing against the gates. Brennan looked to see what had caught my attention and sighed in irritation. I stalked up to the gates, getting as close as I dared. "What are you doing here?"

Oliver Laurier, for his credit, spoke with a fairly normal tone. "Look at him," he referenced the Senator. "For all of his politics, he's got nothing. He should have loved Cleo properly, like I would have." He smiled impishly. "Wouldn't you agree?"

I growled. "Oliver, if you stalk me, I will kick your ass," I promised.

I turned back in time to see a large sledgehammer being taken by a forensic unit in a huge, heavy-duty evidentiary bag. "I don't recognize it, that is not mine!" The Senator shouted after the unit.

Booth was by Brennan when I rejoined her. "At least we got the hammer," Brennan said hopefully.

"Yeah, but that's all we've got," Booth sighed dejectedly.

"The cement floor in the basement wasn't the kill grounds?" I asked, confused. I'd had it pegged! I was so sure…

Booth nodded in disappointment. "Yeah, no blood, diatomaceous earth, nada. We needed a trifecta, Bones, Holly. Physical evidence, murder weapon, and crime scene…"

* * *

><p>I sighed. While Booth was filing paperwork, he'd let Brennan give me a ride to the Jeffersonian. Here, I could lounge with the scientists for a last time. Booth called it his reward for working the case. Personally, I thought working the case in the first place was enough of a reward. It'd been a one-time experience for me, when the only thing I could do was keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. College was maybe possible, but even with my intelligence, basic needs came first. I wasn't Superman (and thank God for that, I get queasy if I'm up high for too long), and those priorities wouldn't change.<p>

The plus was that we'd had a long day, and if we fell asleep, there was a platform in the building that had a couple of coffee tables, sofas, and a loveseat, and the Institution had decontamination showers and temporary living quarters in case of quarantine, so if Booth had to stay late, and I got tired, I'd tell Brennan and turn myself in to a bunk, where I'd doze until Booth could pick me up and take me back to the hotel he'd arranged.

Listening to the scientists and artist talk, I was disappointed that this would be the last time I hung out with them. They were fun and friendly and I had to admit, they'd grown on me in the short time I'd known them. They drank from champagne glasses with amber alcoholic beverages while Angela had been thoughtful enough to get me some ice water from the kitchenette. "They won't arrest him?" Zach's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Don't worry," Hodgins told his friend. "If that's the hammer used on Cleo Eller, he'll get arrested." He lifted up his wine glass. "A toast to getting this bastard." He and Angela clinked their glasses and Brennan and Zach joined in. They all looked at me expectantly, keeping their glasses up together (though it took Brennan and Zach a moment to see what they were waiting for). I blinked. "You're not getting out of this one, kid," Hodgins laughed at my surprise. "You're one of us on this case."

I smiled slightly, hitting the glass lightly with theirs. Zach and Brennan, finally allowed to give their arms reprieve, set their glasses on the coffee tables in front of them. "The hammer's not enough," Brennan said, massaging her forehead with the tips of her fingers. Her words were less enunciated than usual, probably due to the alcohol she'd consumed. "He's going to get away with it. Maybe Booth is right… maybe outside the lab, I'm useless."

"Don't say that, Dr. Brennan," I said encouragingly. "Because you got the Senator's DNA, he freaked, and now we know for sure that he was having an affair with Cleo Eller. That gave us standing ground to work on when we finished the investigation. Not to mention that we wouldn't have had a good starting point without your work here."

Hodgins held up the maroon booklet I'd brought him from Laurier's home. "Let's take guidance from the lives of the Saints," he said sagely.

Angela took the booklet from his hands and opened it up to a random page. "Albertus Magnus, Patron Saint of Scientists," she read, smiling at the irony.

"I thought Magnus was the Patron Saint of fishmongers?" Zach stated, phrasing it more like a question.

Hodgins shook his head, versed in legends and mythology. "Two separate entities. Albertus Magnus was the thirteenth century philosopher. The fishmonger saint was a-"

Brennan jumped, her head shooting up. "Fish!" She shouted in sudden excitement.

I bit my lip for a moment. "No, uh, I'm pretty sure he was human."

"Not the Saint," Brennan said quickly. She looked at Hodgins sharply. "You said that diatomaceous earth could be used as a filtering agent."

Hodgins shrugged but answered his boss anyway, confused by the turn of events. "Yeah, for swimming pools, water filters…"

"Or tropical fish," Brennan interrupted. "Oliver Laurier said that Ken Thompson kept fish."

Brennan leapt to her feet, collecting her messenger bag and purse, getting ready to rush off. "Of course!" I nearly face palmed. "What was the most obvious motive that there was, but we overlooked? Eller had an affair and got pregnant and her boyfriend got jealous and angry!" I scrambled to my feet, letting the glass clink against the table as I set it down without much regard. The ice bobbed in the water at the shift. I ripped my sweater up from off of the back of the loveseat and shoved an arm through, grasping at the other side to pull it on.

"What's your hurry?" Angela demanded, looking from Brennan and I in a mix of confusion and exasperation.

Brennan looked sideways at Angela as she started down the stairs of the platform. I rushed after her, jumping the stairs at once. "Thompson read the warrant, he knows we're looking for diatomaceous earth!" Brennan explained shortly. "Get in touch with Booth and tell him where we're going, okay?"

As we left earshot, I heard Angela say, "She didn't actually say where they were going, did they?"

"Ken Thompson's!" I shouted over my shoulder in response.

* * *

><p>Brennan and I sprinted to Thompson's home. I wish we had a gun. Brennan and I were both good shots, and I had a feeling this might not end well. Brennan peered in through a window and I rapped on the door. "Stop!" She shouted suddenly. "You can't destroy evidence!" She was talking to someone inside the house.<p>

I looked around for a moment, then saw something of use. There was a window just a foot or so away from the door, and considering where the hinges were, I could reach the doorknob to unlock the door. If he destroyed evidence, a murderer went free. I picked up a heavy ceramic planter from the porch and hoisted it up, then swung myself around and let go. The planter sailed into the glass window and, with a loud screech, the glass broke inwards. I thrust my arm forward through the broken glass and around the window, grasping for the door handle. I did my best, but it still took a couple of seconds to locate and twist the deadlock, then to pry down the handle and pull it away from me.

Pulling away from the window, I caught sight of a short scratch on my forearm where a piece of glass must have cut me. A drop of blood spilled from the injury down my arm. I didn't feel it; my heart was pumping rapidly and my breathing was quick. Adrenaline was taking over my system and for now all I could feel were mental emotions. I didn't feel the sting of the cut or the itching of the blood sliding down my skin.

Brennan pushed through the doorway. Letting her lead, I followed her into the house, where she took the first right into a large room. The linoleum was slippery and shone with some sort of liquid substance, and tables of polished, whitewashed wood held empty tanks, a few with neon gravel still in them. I looked up. Thompson was holding a mostly-empty red carton of gasoline. I sobbed dryly in dismay, although no tears spilled. I was too frightened. The ground, and now my shoes and the hems of my pants, were covered in highly-flammable material, and if Thompson lit a lighter now, then the room, and the house, would go up in flames. It would be quick, but while it lasted it would burn like the fires of hell were fabled to feel. I'd never particularly considered myself easily frightened. This, however, nearly made my heart stop. Eh. Even the best real-life heroes have their limits. I guess this must be mine. I wasn't armed and I didn't know what to do.

"This is a private residence," Thompson sneered. "I don't suppose you have a warrant?"

"We're working with the FBI," I shouted, forcing the words out of my raspy throat. Brennan sent me a worried look and nodded towards the doorway, telling me to go. Not going to happen. Not if she wasn't leaving with me. I was scared, but I wasn't a coward. They were different. Not being scared would be stupid. In all honesty, I didn't care if Thompson burned. Not now. "If we have reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed, we don't need a warrant!"

Thompson scoffed. "What crime?" He leered.

"Destruction of evidence pertinent to a federal investigation," Brennan promptly replied.

"I'm just cleaning up," he feigned innocence. "Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?"

"The linoleum looks fairly new," Brennan observed sharply, boldly, considering he had the deadly weapon of gasoline. "What's underneath – cement? The same cement that was embedded in Cleo's skull when you bashed her head in!"

"You might want to get out of here," Thompson cautioned, his eyes narrowed dangerously.

"I can't let you destroy evidence," Brennan returned.

"How are you going to stop me?" He laughed sardonically and my eyes widened. He wasn't afraid. He didn't care if he died. He just didn't want to be prosecuted. There was something wrong with his head!

"I'll stop you," Brennan declared bravely, but I couldn't see how.

Thompson laughed, sounding borderline insane. "Not before I burn this place down with you in it!"

I looked around desperately as Thompson held up a lighter. One flick of his thumb and the house would fall to ashes. Then I saw it – the smoky grey barrel was just visible from its plaque on the wall behind us. I looked from the Senator's aid to the forensic scientist. We had nothing to lose. I took off at a dead bolt, slamming my knuckles against the protective glass. It shattered, the shards embedding themselves into my skin, but like before, I didn't feel it. It's going to be so much fun later when I'm either dead or feeling the pain. I swirled around, praying to whatever luck there was that the gun was loaded, and turned off the safety.

I saw the room swing around, distorted by the chemicals pumping through my body, and saw Thompson's wide eyes as he realized what I'd done; what I was doing.

I saw the lighter as it flicked on and Thompson prepared to drop it.

I saw the gun lash back against me, flying up into the air. I let go of it and it fell to the floor, turning to pieces. With my dominant hand damaged, my hold had been weaker than normal and I hadn't been able to control the backlash like I had at the shooting range. Thompson's body fell to the floor, limp, but his chest moved up and down raggedly, still breathing, though highly labored. The lighter fell from the sky, the whooshing of air shutting out the flame. Even better, it landed on Thompson, who had carefully made sure no gas was on him.

I fell down to my knees on the new linoleum. "Oh my God," I whispered, clarity returning as the threat of imminent death passed. "I shot him."

Brennan picked up the pieces of the gun, her shoes clicking on the tiles. She slid the barrel back up with a click and reloaded the remaining rounds and aimed it at Thompson once more in threat, seeing as I'd hit him non-fatally in the stomach. My hazy vision refocused. Brennan's chest was heaving as she tried to calm down.

A gasp of surprise left my mouth as I saw the newcomer in the building. He stepped up by me in the threshold and I recoiled. "I don't get it," Brennan was panting at the nearly-unconscious aid. "It wasn't jealousy, it wasn't passion, Cleo wouldn't get rid of your boss's baby and so you got rid of her. What kind of psychology is that? What kind of person are you?"

"Holly," Laurier asked me, drawing Brennan's attention. "Are you alright?"

Brennan swung the weapon around. "Oliver, I understand you're here out of a misguided concern for her safety," she said, her rapidly-spoken words blending slightly as a mix of adrenalin and alcohol hazed her mind, much like mine had been moving in slow motion a moment prior. "But I apparently don't read people very well and you could be in some kind of psychotic collusion with Ken, so I'm going to ask you to go over there and apply pressure to his wound until the police get here, you understand?"

"Okay," Laurier nodded frantically, raising his hands above his head. "Okay." Pause. "Did he kill Cleo?"

"Yeah…"

"Okay," Laurier repeated. "Well, I'm down with him bleeding to death."

I grimaced, cradling my injured limb as the feeling started to return to me. My stomach lurched as I felt the warm blood oozing between my fingers from the injuries to my fist. "Did I mention that applying pressure to a gunshot wound is extremely painful?" I asked, teeth grit.

While Laurier moved to Thompson, Brennan came to me and set the weapon in front of her so she could grab it again if need be. "Holly," she said. "Did you break any bones?"

I winced, shaking my head. "No. Nothing's broken, I'm just cut… It's mostly just a bunch of shallow scrapes, so they'll heal quickly..."

Brennan let me hide my hand against my stomach, covering it with my other arm. Sirens started to wail, getting louder as they got closer. "The police," I said in relief. Hopefully they had some band aids with them… Or at least a damp cloth and a pair of tweezers to pull all the glass shards out with.

* * *

><p>When I was in the hospital, it was mostly just preliminary. The nurses took my clothes (since they had flammable material on them) and, with my permission, trashed them, giving me a hospital gown instead. I could live my whole life without a reminder of that night again. It wasn't that I was opposed to having shot a man. In my mind, the man deserved it, and when I'd asked the nurses had been able to tell me that he'd survive through it, so it was better that I shot him and now the Ellers knew what happened and the murderer prosecuted. I was kept overnight, since Booth had a lot of paperwork to do anyway, and it took the nurses a while to get all of the glass shards out of my hand.<p>

By the time they were done, my hand looked a lot more of a bloody mess than it actually was. They washed the blood with a warm cloth and, then it was clear that it was just a bunch of shallow cuts. The worst had stopped bleeding an hour after the glass was out. Just to be on the safe side, since if I didn't let them heal it could damage the nerves, the nurses gave me some thin gloves to wear to keep my hands safe. The one on my forearm that I'd got from the window had been a little worse than I'd anticipated, but it was still fine to just slap a band aid on.

The morning after, I'd been surprised when Cleo Eller's parents came by to see me. They told me the funeral was this afternoon, but they assumed I'd still be either in the hospital or getting my statement taken, so they came by to offer gratitude in person. I had shot a man, after all. They thanked me for risking my life. They thanked me for doing so much to make sure their daughter's murderer wouldn't get away with his crime. And they thanked me for doing what I did to uncover the truth of what had happened to their daughter. They even volunteered to testify my innocence if charges were pressed for shooting, but I told them politely that it probably wouldn't be necessary. I might be in trouble, but I couldn't be convicted for non-fatally shooting a man who tried to light me on fire in self-defense and the defense of another vulnerable party. My justifications, plus Thompson's crimes, would probably make it so I was cleared.

I was really shocked when the Jeffersonian team stopped by. I wasn't too surprised that Booth came with them, or Brennan, considering she and I had both been through the ordeal and only we knew completely how terrifying it had been. But Hodgins, Angela, and even Zach had also tagged along to see how I was doing. I was completely touched by the gesture. Zach had done his best to be supportive by relaying statistics, Angela had given me warm praise and thanks for protecting her friend, and Hodgins had joked about me shooting people. It had been tactless, but I'd found it funny. Brennan had been lighthearted and agreed with my thoughts on the consequences of shooting, and even Booth had backed up our beliefs. Booth himself had ruffled my hair and said that I was practically a junior agent, though I think he was mostly just glad that Brennan and I weren't dead.

The director himself had come by and offered sympathies for the events, although it was clear that he'd been urged to do so by someone else. He didn't particularly like me, you see. When asked, he did tell me that charges weren't going to be pressed. It was my only federal offense and even though it had been on a Senator's aid, it had been justified as self-defense, and it was an added plus that I'd been defending another person. Although I shouldn't be counting on it disappearing from the FBI records, I was told that it would go on file as simply that; a record, and not an offense, with full detail listed so it wouldn't impediment any future choices I made.

So, that was the end of my once-in-a-lifetime adventure with the FBI and the Jeffersonian Institution. I would still be with Booth for a bit – the gang thing had been reassigned, but more investigation had taken me off of the suspect list. I would continue spending my nights at the hotel for Booth's convenience until the gang issue was resolved, and the FBI had sent records to my boss at the bar I worked at establishing that my continued absence until an unidentified date in the future was excused by the federal government and that, no, I was not under arrest or anything detrimental to my work resume.

After reflecting on the events of the past twenty-four hours, I sank down into the soft mattress of the hotel room, my head cushioned by the pillow and my body warmed by the fluffy bedspread, I stretched out my legs and arms, flexing my hand. Turns out, most of the pain had been from the glass. It hurt a bit, but it wasn't too much of a bother and I wouldn't even need the gloves in a couple of days.

The Jeffersonian scientists I'd followed on TV and in the news actually wanted me to be okay. There were FBI agents outside my room and Booth was to be notified immediately if there was any sign of odd activity. Another horrible murderer had been caught and was being booked for trial. For the first time in a long time, I drifted off into an actual, peaceful slumber, a feeling of satisfaction comforting me even in unconsciousness.


	6. The Man in the SUV, Part One

**The next morning marked the second day after Thompson's failed 'destroy the evidence' plan. It was fairly early when I woke up to someone lightly jostling my shoulders. I scowled and tried to stay asleep until I realized it meant someone was in my room. I sat up with a jolt, circulatory system struggling to keep up and my head enduring a huge ache. All the same, I lashed out with my fist, but my wrist, which was sort of slow due to my state of only half-awareness, was caught by a strong hand.**

** "****Whoa, whoa. Settle, kid," a familiar voice calmed.**

**I shook my head, blinked, and looked up. Booth's hand still held my wrist in place until he saw that I was more aware of my surroundings. I relaxed. Booth wasn't a sign of danger anymore. "Booth," I greeted in confusion. "What are you doing?" I looked to the alarm clock the hotel provided. "It's seven. Didn't you tell me yesterday to get my rest?"**

** "****Thought I would invite you to the newest case," Booth said casually, shoving his fists in his pockets. "But if you'd rather sleep than investigate another murder case…"**

**I shoved the blankets off of me and tossed my legs over the side of the bed, not quite getting out but not letting myself fall back into unconsciousness. "I'm interested," I stopped him. "But I was only investigating the Eller case." I was honestly confused; the director didn't like me and I hadn't been too much of an asset to the Jeffersonian. I'd asked Angela to make some calculations and identified a motive, but that was pretty much it. The most memorable thing I'd done was shoot a man, and that wasn't something to really be proud of. They were the best forensic analysts in the country – possibly the world, even – and I was a rebellious teen from the slum part of the city. Besides, the FBI is only eligible for applications of the age twenty-one or older, only a few cases exempt.**

** "****Yeah, well, the squints wanted you back with them again. They missed you, although they'd never say it in such normal terms," Booth said lamely, wrinkling his nose at their social behaviors. I rolled my eyes.**

** "****I have a hard time believing that Dr. Brennan and her colleagues actually desire to work in cooperation with a kid who's not even gone to college."**

** "****Yeah, and I had a hard time believing that they even knew how to enjoy being around people that aren't dead. We're both surprised today."**

**I slid off of the bed. I would take his word for it, and if he was lying, then I guess I'd find out. "And if you're working the case, I guess that's my loophole into it, as well?"**

**Booth clicked his tongue and pointed at me. "Ten out of ten."**

**A small smile tried to fight its way onto my face. Finally I gave a slight laugh. "Alright. Give me thirty minutes and I'll be ready to go to the crime scene." **

**Wow. The second homicide case in my life that I'm actually investigating! With the Jeffersonian Institution, no less!**

* * *

><p><strong>I dressed casually. I didn't have any professional clothes, so I'd have to hope that it didn't really matter. My seatbelt was clicked in place across my chest, keeping me against the back of the seat in Booth's FBI SUV passenger side. "You're famous, Holly," he said good-naturedly, taking a hand away from the steering wheel temporarily to wave at a newspaper on the dashboard. "The media got hold of the story."<strong>

** "****You seem to like me a lot more than you did when we met less than a week ago," I observed critically, but I picked up the newspaper tentatively.**

** "****Well, you're not a murderer and you're a good kid," Booth said gruffly, not wanting to get sentimental and sweet. I could relate. I think if I ever had to do that, I'd kill myself with a two-by-four. "You were pretty useful in the Eller case."**

** "****Please," I sighed, looking down at the newspaper. "You and Dr. Brennan did all the work. I just gave opinions, pissed people off, and shot a guy. Hardly impressive." My eyes widened when I found the front page. A picture of myself talking to Brennan that night at the Senator's house was on the cover, taken most likely by one of the photographers that had leaked through security before being escorted off the property. I was deep in a nervous conversation with the anthropologist. In the picture, my features seemed harsh; I was scowling, so it was probably right after we'd been shoved out of the way of the crime scene search team. My hair had lost some of the usual volume through the day full of car rides and warm buildings, and was mostly straight, my bangs brushed to one side and my hair falling over my shoulders. My arms were crossed derisively and even in the colorless photograph, my eyes were sharp. A caption labeled us as ****_best-selling author, Temperance Brennan {Ph.D} conversing with a formerly-unknown young woman outside the Senator's house reinforcing the follow-up of a search warrant_****.**

**The headline was bolded and the rest of the text was pretty large. This story had been a big hit with the editors, that much was clear.**

****FEDERAL Bureau of Investigation working in cooperation with Jeffersonian Scientists – and a seventeen-year-old kid?****

**First-hand reports all collaborate and say that award-winning author Dr. Temperance Brennan (a forensic anthropologist from the Jeffersonian Institution's Medico-Legal Laboratory) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are now collaborating with a strange teenager that no one has seen before on a high-profile investigation of the murder of young Miss Cleo Eller, Senator Bethlehem's former intern. Are the FBI so desperate that they enlist the official expertise of children now?**

**Sources have identified the mysterious third party between the collaborating FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth and leading forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan as a seventeen-year old by the name of Holly Elena Emily Anya Kirkland, a resident of D.C.'s darker corners. Officially taken in under suspicions of murder only days prior, Holly has been cleared of all charges and is now under the protection of FBI Agent Booth. It seems she is also granted access to the case declaring unofficial war on the United States Senator.**

**One would think the girl would be off the case as soon as the FBI is done with her, but further investigation also shows that she was partaking in friendly allegiances with the other residents of the Jeffersonian Institution's forensic science unit. Is she some sort of prodigy to be exempt from the balanced rules?**

**Well, whether or not she is, Holly certainly deserves a huge pat on the back for her actions. With Dr. Brennan, she uncovered the real murderer of Senate intern Cleo Eller, daughter to a Major from the first Gulf War. Senate Bethlehem's aid, Ken Thompson, murdered Eller by stabbing her multiple times, smashing her head against the floor of his aquarium room, and dumped her body in the pond at Arlington. Upon confronting Thompson during his attempt to desecrate any convicting evidence of his crimes, Holly saved herself and Dr. Brennan by taking quick action. When Thompson attempted to douse his home with gasoline and burn both women alive, Holly broke a display case on the nearby wall and shot Thompson with his own weapon. Thompson's injury was deliberately non-fatal. The FBI have deemed that no charges will be pressed on Holly as she acted defensively, and her unprecedented entry into Thompson's home was taken on account of her collaboration with the FBI.**

**Who is the seventeen-year old? Not remotely famous or notorious whatsoever, her sudden appearance into the ranks of the crime-solving scene have mystified our sources. What makes her valuable to the leading crime-solving team of the Jeffersonian, and why does the FBI approve of her involvement? Is it her intelligence? Quick thinking? Strength? Or does she have internal connections in the bureau? Dear readers, we have taken it upon ourselves to find out.**

**I groaned, tossing the paper down back onto the dashboard. "Fantastic," I griped. "Now the whole world wants to know who I am."**

** "****Here's what you do if any reporters get to you; answer what you like, and say 'no comment' to what you don't. If they keep harassing you, tell them to go through the FBI. Don't make a scene with them or it'll egg them on further," Booth advised.**

**I gaped in dismay. "You expect them to get to me?"**

** "****I expect them to try."**

**We were quiet for the rest of the ride to the scene. When we found a parking spot, Booth told me the wonderful details of this one. It was a bomber, possibly terrorism, in a public place. An SUV had been blown up with someone inside it, and there were a lot of people injured, a few dead. It was in a normally nice part of town, the SUV just to the side of a little café with an outdoor seating area with umbrellas perched over the tables. I think that café might have to up their prices to compensate for their lack of customers. It wasn't until we got close to the sight that I saw the media being pushed back to government officials. Someone pointed me out, their green eyes widening in recognition, and I groaned, abhorred, as pictures started flashing and the indistinct roar of several people talking at once became louder. I covered my face with my hands. "Oh, no…"**

**As we got closer, pushing through the throng and into the scene, someone stuck a microphone in my face. "Is it true that you're only seventeen?"**

** "****Is it true that you really think people care more about me than they do a bomb attack?" I shot back, temper flaring. "Get the goddamn microphone out of my face."**

** "****Will you confirm that you shot Ken Thompson, the Senator's aid, in his own home?"**

** "****I'll confirm that you can go through public affairs to find information rather than harassing me."**

**As the number of pauses increased, so did the proverbial steam coming out of my ears. A woman with long brown hair stopped me. "Can I have a moment of your time to discuss your-"**

**I glared and interrupted her, getting increasingly violent. "You can have my fist in your face if you don't f*** off and leave me alone!"**

**Booth grabbed my shoulders and steered me directly through to the crime scene tape and held it up for me. I ducked under, relieved to be away from the mass of the media outlets seeking coverage. "Bones!" Booth shouted to Dr. Brennan, who was talking to Angela with confusion etched over her features. Angela stood next to her, looking around in mild interest and not paying too much attention. "Bones! Over here!"**

**Brennan spotted us and tapped Angela, pointing us out. They came over to us, Brennan rather frustrated. "Where have you been?" She demanded of Booth. "You said you would meet us on the corner!"**

** "****I had to stop to get your junior squint for you-"**

** "****Hey!"**

** "****And there's a lot going on, in case you haven't noticed," Booth said crossly, motioning back behind us. He looked to the approaching security guard. "These girls are with me. Dr. Temperance Brennan, Angela Montenegro from the Jeffersonian; Holly Kirkland, my charge by the FBI."**

** "****I need ID," the guard informed him.**

**Booth tried to wave away the guard but realized that wouldn't work. "Check the RI5 list, Homeland Security. They're the forensic anthropologist, artist, and ward of the FBI."**

**The guard flipped up one of the numerous pages in the clipboard and his eyes scanned over the contents before nodding shortly. **

** "****They're clear."**

** "****Thanks," Booth said, not at all sounding grateful. "C'mon," he beckoned us.**

** "****Hi Angela," I said conversationally to the artist. "Did you all at the Jeffersonian really ask for Booth to invite me?"**

** "****We sure did," she said with a smile and a nod. "Why? Did you not want to be here?" Her smile was quickly replaced by a concerned frown.**

** "****No," I hastily reassured her. "I was just really surprised."**

** "****Hon, you're a legend in the city, in case you haven't noticed." Angela pointed out wryly, motioning to the flashing cameras directed at me and not the scene.**

**I cringed. "Yeah, well, I hope I'm just a one-hit wonder."**

**Angela shook her head, smiling at my attitude, before wrinkling her nose in disgust. "Oh, God. What's that smell?"**

**I looked to the ground, heaving a sigh. "Barbeque…" I answered lowly.**

** "****Burnt flesh," Brennan promptly answered from ahead of us. She turned to Booth again. This time I listened. "Are there a lot of injuries?"**

** "****Four known dead, fifteen injured," Booth recited.**

**Corpses of the deceased were laid under dark blue tarps. Even though they themselves weren't visible, it wasn't magic to guess what was under them. Angela turned a sickly color as she forced herself to look away, her eyes gaining a haunted quality.**

** "****Details, whatever you have," Brennan demanded.**

** "****Not much," Booth said regretfully. "Witnesses said they saw a middle Eastern man, mid-thirties, pull up to the café, and the car just blew. The vehicle is registered to a Hamid Masruk, head of the American-Arab friendship league."**

**I gasped in surprise, earning the attention of my three… colleagues. I would have smiled myself silly at that thought, but the magnitude of the situation was horrifying. "Consultant for Arabian relations?" I confirmed, a sinking feeling pooling in my stomach. ****_Please say no._**

**An agent in Homeland Security gave me a short nod under a glare from Booth, answering to me reluctantly. "If you know who it is, why do you need me?" Brennan questioned, snapping on a pair of latex gloves and taking a steady step closer to the blown-up van.**

** "****Because we're hoping we're wrong," the same agent told her gravely. "Masruk is a White House consultant for Arab relations, as the girl said. Had lunch with the President just last week."**

**Booth jerked his thumb at the agent as a means of a lousy introduction. "Agent Gibson from Homeland Security. Dr. Temperance Brennan, Angela Montenegro, and Holly Kirkland." Booth pointed to all of us in turn as he said out names. "If Masruk was involved in a terrorist attack, then we have a humongous national security problem."**

** "****Not to mention a very humiliated president," Gibson added with a deep scowl. "The press is already running with this."**

**I fixed him with a cold look. "I should think you'd be more concerned with the president's life and health than his pride. I believe I speak for myself and Dr. Brennan when I say that if you expect our findings to be altered-"**

** "****Look," Gibson sneered at me shortly. "Not at all. But maybe it's not Masruk. We need to be sure. I'm not entirely sure why you're here."**

** "****She's here at my request," Brennan inputted sharply.**

**Gibson sent me a warning look with his eyes that I raised my eyebrows at. Nevertheless, Brennan could easily refuse to assist them in this project and so he had to respect her wishes to some extents, so he didn't continue his verbal assault that meant nothing to anyone except himself. He nodded his head to her in respect. "Booth says you're the best."**

**Brennan ignored Gibson, calling to Booth over her shoulder while she looked but didn't touch the remnants of the man and the car. "I need surgical gloves and masks for the retrieval team. Sterile medical bags, and vegetable oil."**

** "****Vegetable oil?" The former sniper echoed skeptically.**

**I nodded. It made sense to me. "The oil will loosen the seared body parts stuck to the metal. It's not much different than cleaning up after a barbeque."**

**Booth made a face, probably not liking the image in front of him now being associated with 'Barbeque Saturday'. "It's okay," he stopped me. "I'll trust you on that."**

**Zach approached Brennan's side, coming practically from out of nowhere. A camera hung around his neck, quite possibly the same one that he'd used when he took pictures of Cleo Eller after she'd been removed from the pond. "Should I photograph the scene?"**

** "****Focus on a thirty meter radius from the blast," Brennan consented. She seemed deeply aggrieved, even slightly out of character. What seemed particularly unusual to me is that she actually asked Booth if it was okay to retrieve something that she saw.**

**Booth sauntered over to her. "You know, it's okay to be upset."**

**Brennan shook her head, her lips tight. "I wish this is the worst thing I'd seen," she confided darkly, lifting up what looked like a foot from the driver's side of the SUV. It was mutilated and blackened, the skin seared and cooked. Angela stood to the side, obediently holding open a dark red retrieval evidence bag.**

**Angela swallowed thickly as Brenna held up the body part to the sunlight, trying to determine what it was. The forensic artist tore her gaze away from her friend and passed the retrieval bag off to Booth, looking down at the ground and sounding uncharacteristically subdued. "You know… uh…. I don't think I can…" she gave up on trying to convey her meaning and walked in another direction. "Sorry."**

**I nodded to Angela empathetically, showing that I understood. I don't know why it didn't bother me. Maybe I was used to horror; maybe it had something to do with my mentality; maybe I had a mental disorder. Maybe it was something else. But while I knew it was horrible, I didn't feel the same level of abhorrence as Angela obviously did.**

**I wasn't sure whether feeling it or not was worse.**

**Brennan seemed to decide she'd need her equipment to decipher the few clues offered to her by the exploded flesh and started to move to put it in the bag, but she caught Booth fidgeting and avoiding looking at the severed piece of human while he held out the bag. She sighed in mild irritation. "Well, if you can't either…"**

** "****No, I'm cool," Booth protested unconvincingly.**

**Brennan bought it. "Zach, I need two more evidence bags!"**

* * *

><p><strong>The Medico-Legal lab was busy due to everyone being so worried that this was terrorism. If it was, then security was really bad, and the president could easily be assassinated. Due to the hectic buzz, the Jeffersonian was taking out the big guns and enlisting everyone possible to assist them in identifying the man from the SUV and reconstructing the bomb. These little facts could tell whether or not Hamid Masruk was a terrorist or not and if he was still out there. Due to the need for speed, Brennan gave me latex gloves and is letting me look over the burnt corpse with her and the other forensic scientists.<strong>

** "****Facial epidermis and the fingertips are completely decimated," I reported, trying and failing to make a sense from the cooked, burned, and blackened mass of bone and sinew. "There's no way identity is coming from the flesh. It's pretty much all carbon."**

** "****We are missing the lower left leg and the lumbar spine," Zach told Brennan, looking up from his bone count.**

** "****Here's the C2 and the right ischium," Brennan pointed to the bones she was referencing. I picked them up and moved them back onto the exam table along with the rest of the remains in anatomical order.**

**Zach sighed in frustration. "Smoky here had access to the president." I had to quickly stifle a snicker at the nickname. At least it was fitting. "Why would he attack a café?"**

** "****Smoky?" Brennan asked. She understood what he was referring to, but she didn't seem to get the humor behind it.**

** "****It's how I deal with stress," Zach said, raising his shoulders slightly in his own defense.**

**Hodgins walked over to the microscope on a desk by the rails, sliding a Petri dish into focus of the lenses. "Targeting everyday places causes panic. People stay home, the economy is crippled," Hodgins patiently explained to his friend. "It's Terrorism 101."**

**I nodded, looking up to Zach. "If this was a case of terrorism, then we're lucky it's not worse," I stated grimly. "A really awful but effective terrorism strategy is to wreak havoc in a public place, one filled with civilians. Then you have the EMTs – ambulances, police – all in one place, where another wave hits, wiping out first responders. It terrifies the citizens. The economy fails, businesses go under, and the government is scared to issue responders to reports."**

**As I looked down to identify another bone, I felt eyes on me. I rolled my eyes but didn't look back up. "Criminal Minds season three finale. Really good. It continued into the first episode of season four. Twist ending."**

** "****Take samples from the clothes," Brennan replied, back on topic now that she had her unspoken question answered and she had a reasonable answer to go with it. "See whatever you can find. Traces of cologne, laundry detergent, anything that we can link to Masruk's home."**

**Hodgins grasped a pair of thin tweezers and stepped closer to the body, holding a microscope Petri container in one hand to place particulates. He clicked the ends of the tweezers together. "I'll also grab any particulates that I can use to identify the type of bomb."**

** "****Isn't that the FBI's job?" Zach asked, but he stepped away from the table subserviently to give Hodgins room to move about for a moment to gather particulates.**

**Hodgins scoffed like this was hilarious. "What, you trust the FBI?" When Zach gave him a look, not understanding Hodgins' obvious contempt, the entomologist rolled his eyes. "You realize those guys are going to suppress whatever they need to to cover their asses."**

** "****I found a portion of the clavicle," Zach announced, setting the aforementioned bone onto the exam table in its anatomically-correct place.**

** "****Are you even listening?" Hodgins demanded, irked.**

** "****No."**

** "****They have a separate division, you know. That way their hands are always clean. In 1970-"**

** "****Jack!" Brennan interrupted, giving Hodgins a long, hard look. "We're trying to work."**

**Hodgins looked a bit put out. "Don't worry, dude," I said nonchalantly, standing up straight again and rolling my shoulders to get the kinks out. "We all have quirks. Conspiracy is yours; no big deal."**

** "****Says the seventeen year old in a forensics and FBI team," Hodgins shot back good-naturedly. He didn't notice as Booth came to the center platform. The alarm would have gone off (Brennan had to swipe her ID card for it to let me up), but a guard entered in the code so the FBI agent was able to come up behind Hodgins without the entomologist knowing. "Someone seems really defensive about the FBI lately," Hodgins said conspiratorially to me, obviously talking about Brennan. I cringed almost indiscernibly, realizing what Hodgins was aiming at. "You realize that Booth is just another government stooge, right?"**

** "****This has nothing to do with Booth," Brennan answered firmly.**

**Booth scowled. "You know," Hodgins jumped and spun around to see Booth, then took a few quick steps to another part of the platform. "I don't enjoy having squints on my team any more than you like me on yours, but you know we're supposed to be working together. Okay?"**

**Hodgins rolled his eyes, quickly getting over being spooked by the so-called 'government stooge'. "Sure. So what do we do, group hug?"**

** "****I'd rather not," I said seriously, making a face and looking back down at the exam table. Smoky was coming together nicely, although I doubt he'd say the same if he saw himself as an array of bones and smoked meat.**

**Booth ignored Hodgins' witty comment and my remark. "Agent Gibson here will be overseeing things for Homeland Security," he announced, making a sweeping gesture with his hand to the officer from earlier. Taking the cue, Gibson stepped up the platform, the guard entering another key code so the alarm didn't beep.**

** "****I'll try not to be in the way," he told us humbly. "I'll keep the kid out of your hair, too."**

** "****Firstly," I said, a little irate. "I'm not in the way. I'm assisting them, and your comments on my age and skill levels, or lack thereof, is really starting to make me mad, and I have anger management issues. Secondly," I added with a more patient tone, looking to Brennan. "It was an expression."**

** "****We don't need to be overseen," Brennan stated defiantly.**

**Booth inhaled deeply, shrugging his shoulders. "That's really not your call, Bones. How soon can we get the DNA match?"**

** "****That'll take days," Brennan estimated, shaking her head. "I can get a match much sooner than that. I have all we need."**

**Gibson pointed at the exam table with an expression of unease. "You're going to be able to ID him from that?"**

**Zach and I exchanged a look, and the intern turned to tensely tell the agent, "Asking stuff like that is in the way."**

**Brennan addressed Zach and I as she stripped the exam gloves off of her hands. "Remove any flesh and particulates you can, and then macerate them, Zach. Holly, work with what you can without violating the basic guidelines and do as Zach requests." She stepped down off the platform, Booth following unsurely. She sent an annoyed look at Gibson as she passed by on the ground level. "If that's alright with you?"**

**Gibson nodded, taken aback by her mild hostility. He leaned his hands on the examination table, bracing himself against his own weight. I jumped; any particulates on him could hinder the investigation if they got mixed up with what was already on the bomb victim, seeing as he wasn't wearing gloves. I reached over and shoved his hands off of the table suddenly. "Don't touch the table," I warned. His hands went up slightly, skeptical, and his hands approached the table again. "Don't touch the table," I repeated with more vehemence, giving him a sharp glare.**

**Hodgins clapped him hard on the arm. "Do as she says and don't touch the table," he instructed. "We're very territorial about our table," he added as a joke. ****…****_We? Our?_**

**Thirty minutes later found me assisting Zach in setting the remains gently in a little terrarium. I was actually looking forward to this a little. I'd always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie; the feel-good vibes had an attractive effect, and so I never minded being a little scared or antsy after the fact. So being near the creepy bugs that Zach was planning to feed the victim to was disturbing (bugs weren't my forte), but I'd live with it. The things I just really can't seem to get over are snakes, spiders, and slugs. I mean… ew. I've never liked reptiles or arachnids, but if I see one, I freak out. For example: once I saw a common gardener snake slithering through my sink. The plumbing in my part of town meets legal standards, but it's not excellent. That's why I have a tap filter on my sink faucet. Anyway, I freaked out and ran outside, screaming all the way, and then called animal control. I was shivering five minutes later. Another example; one time I saw a spider on a park bench. I screamed and a senior citizen had to come over and kill it with her newspaper for me to calm down. I've never gone to that park again. As for slugs, that's more since I was ten. I think they're just disturbing, gross little pests. I'm a bit better about my reactions now, but they're still not at all calm and composed.**

** "****All the trace evidence has been stripped," Zach told me, mistaking my reasons for chewing on my latex glove-free fingernails. It's a bad habit when I'm nervous, but the lab doesn't allow chewing gum during examinations and animal-related tasks. "Hodgins scavenged as much as he could."**

**I nodded, not bothering to correct him on why I was demonstrating nervous tics. "Okay then. Let's get started."**

**Zach lifted up a huge clear glass jar of crawling beetles. I shivered. It was funny; woman's skeleton drenched in water with the skull bludgeoned? Piece of cake. Man's body cooked and blasted apart by a bomb? No problem. A jar of insects? Ew. I took comfort in knowing that Gibson, who was keeping an eye on Zach and I while we worked, was showing more disgust than I was.**

**Zach tipped the jar upside down, tapping lightly on the bottom. He watched with a content smile as they spilled and fell out of the jar, like other people his age would smile at a puppy or a litter of kitties. Oh, God… Zach sees the beetles as his pets. That's both disturbing and cute. They fell into the terrarium and onto Smoky's seared flesh with the sound of sand hitting the floor of an hourglass, but much louder, like little marbles hitting the bottom of a glass jar. They were tiny little things, but they squirmed and went straight to work, finding a place to snack.**

** "****What the hell are those?" Gibson demanded, rearing up in abhorred disbelief. He probably thought we desecrated evidence.**

** "****Dermestes Maculatus," Zach said, getting down onto his knees to watch the beetles work through the side of the terrarium.**

** "****Flesh-eating beetles," I translated. "It's how the Jeffersonian cleans the flesh off of burn victims. Isolate the bones and we can be more accurate on the general details, as well as identify any particular injuries or health conditions that could link to a person's profile. And you're getting in the way again."**

**Gibson's phone rang and he answered it on the second buzz, holding it up to his ear. It was an expensive phone, the likes of which I'd never be able to afford. Hell, I didn't even have a mobile phone! The only one I had was a lousy landline service that couldn't leave my place and had to be wired up at all times.**

** "****Gibson. Yes sir… Yes, sir." Gibson took the phone away from his ear and spoke, not addressing Zach or I in particular. "The President wants to know how long the ID is going to take."**

** "****YO, MR. PRESIDENT!" I shouted suddenly, sure that the person on the other end of the line would have heard me. I smirked. I can now say I talked to the president of the United States of America. Triumphant, I tilted my head towards Zach's pets. "Why don't you ask them?"**

* * *

><p><strong>Sahar Masruk, Hamid Masruk's wife, and Hamid's brother Farid were being held in the interrogation room for questioning. Sahar was exceptionally beautiful. I've never met anyone who had anything nice to say about the appearance of Arabian women, calling them gypsies or making fun of them for dressing like princesses. Thank you, Disney. Then again, it might have to do with the part of town I live in. Myself, I see no reason to be so rude. Arabians are still humans and the only reason they're classed differently than Americans is because of their culture and the negative connotation coming with being from the Middle-Eastern part of the world. Sahar could easily be a model. Her complexion was dark and fair and her eyes were charcoal. She didn't wear much makeup, unlike some people who felt makeup a necessity to bring out their nicer features. Sahar's hair was long and inky black, and somehow she managed to keep it tame and untangled, even though she was pacing around and didn't have it tied up in any way. She wore a dark orange top and beige slacks, looking like a normal person who was stressed out.<strong>

**Hamid wasn't much different. The major variable was that he was kind of a guy. His pants were slacks like Sahar's and he wore a sweater vest over a navy blue long-sleeved shirt. His hair was a lighter black but his eyes were roughly the same color as his sister-in-law's. The other notable main difference was his face. Not that I'm being rude or anything, but there were unusual scars on both sides of his face, like he'd been dragged along a concrete road by a taxi for a few hours and then it hadn't healed right. I think it might be a genetic disease.**

** "****You've made a mistake," Sahar said rather decisively, shaking her head. Her black hair swished over her paling cheeks.**

** "****My brother was no terrorist," Farid denied the other implication. We'd just told them that we found a body in Hamid Masruk's SUV and we have no positive identity, but that it's likely Hamid. Of course, this included telling them about the bomb (not that they haven't heard that already). Sahar was outright denying it. Farid, however, seemed to have an easier time accepting the news of his brother's likely death, instead defending his brother's honor. "He hated those people. You can read his speeches. Talk to anyone!"**

** "****We're not making any accusations," Booth said evenly, leaning back in his chair next to me. He was letting me assist him in the interrogations; I was proud of this. It meant he believed I knew what I was doing, or at least that I could be trusted.**

** "****It's all over the news," Farid told us desperately, wanting us to do something about it. "It's all anyone is talking about." His words were very slightly clipped, the result of English not being his natural language. I imagine anyone who heard me speak a foreign language would detect something along the same lines.**

** "****We cannot control the media, Mr. Masruk," I said, pushing the limits of my patience. "If we could, they wouldn't even be covering the bombing."**

** "****How about your men?" Sahar demanded, lifting her chin to us in a challenge. "They've searched our house. They've talked to our friends."**

** "****Until we can positively identify the body in the explosion, we must conduct a thorough investigation," Booth said adroitly.**

** "****So identify the body," Sahar said like she thought it was that simple. "The longer you wait… do you know what it is like for us?"**

** "****Mrs. Masruk, it's not as simple as you seem to think it is," I said, trying to figure out a way to tell her what we were facing tactfully. "The explosion severely damaged the remains. The body was fragmented. I do know what it's like to not know what happened, or whether or not your family is dead or alive." My current foster guardians, who had disappeared, hadn't had any contact with me since they drove away. I didn't bother myself with them, but lying about it was immoral, and for all intents and purposes, this was a purely professional confession to get Sahar to pose submissive to the FBI. "I understand how difficult it is for you not to know and yet to deal with the consequences. My coworkers-" I couldn't help but smile slightly at this. I had to say it to include myself or Sahar might alienate me, but it was still nice to say. "-And I are working as quickly as we can to get the information we need. That's why I requested for you to bring his history. Where he grew up, injuries from his youth, and medical records can all assist us in identifying the body sooner."**

**Sahar calmed herself, swallowed dryly, and sat down in her chair again, withdrawing a thick manila envelope from her large purse. She set it on the table and slid it across the tabletop to me. "Of course. I brought you what you asked for."**

** "****Thank you," I said, bowing my neck briefly in respect. My interaction with Sahar and Farid was helped by my knowledge of their culture, I could tell.**

**Sahar choked, tears that had been fighting to break free finally managing to spill down her face. "We lived just like you." No, you didn't. You lived better than I did, but I get the point. "We came to this country because we love it. We are Americans. It can't be Hamid. It can't. My husband was not a terrorist."**

* * *

><p><strong>When I got back to the Jeffersonian, Zach and Hodgins were debating over what the bomb could have been made of. Hodgins kept the computer screen angled at them and away from Gibson, who was looking frustrated. "I'm back," I announced needlessly. "How's it going?"<strong>

**Zach held up some printed documents for a moment before setting them down, displaying he'd run the scans. He doesn't need to show me. My opinion doesn't technically matter. "I have his detergent brand, cologne, and shampoo. He died a well-groomed man."**

** "****I'm sure he'll be able to rest in peace now that the world is aware he had good personal hygiene," I commented wryly. "Dr. Brennan, Mrs. Masruk brought the files. Is there anywhere we can go over it?"**

**Brennan looked up and started stripping the gloves off of her hands. The latex crackled as the rubber gave away to the pull. "We can use my office," she told me. "Are the bones done yet?"**

** "****Miss Kirkland?" Gibson asked. I pretended not to hear him out of spite.**

**Zach nodded. "I'll go check on the beetles."**

**Brennan nodded to her grad student and came down the platform steps to me, pointing out the way to her office. She led in front of me and I followed. Gibson chased after us, irked. "Miss Kirkland, whatever you have there-"**

**I lifted up the envelope and lazily waved it around over my shoulder. "It's some paper, that's it. Just paper with printer ink stamped onto it. I'm sure if you really want to lay your eyes on some, the White House can easily produce the same thing." **

* * *

><p><strong>Brennan and I were sitting across from each other. Brennan was leaning against the sofa in her office, hunching over the pictures and papers around her floor. I was a few feet away but directly in front of her, my back arched and on my knees, looking around. Although the papers seemed scattered, Brennan and I understood the organization of which they held as we'd laid them out.<strong>

** "****Hard at work?" I jumped. Angela was standing at the doorway, her eyes narrowed curiously. She took a few steps over to the side of the couch so she could see the papers spread across the floor of the office. "There's a shocker."**

** "****I just saw his wife," I explained to the artist. "She gave me Masruk's medical records and photographs. He was ill. They were testing for lupus, which would explain his face." I gestured to a picture of Masruk's smiling torso with Sahar's. His face had the same disfigurement as his brother's. "It must have been painful," I added with a sigh. I think I knew that it was only a matter of time before the last five days started catching up with me, but I didn't see it coming. It blindsided me; I didn't realize the empathy was creeping up on me. I shook my head shortly, trying to brush it off. THE Dr. Temperance Brennan didn't ask for my assistance just for empathy.**

**Angela shifted, her skirt rustling as her weight shifted from foot-to-foot. "Look," she started uncertainly. "Bren, I… I know that you needed help out there. At the crime scene. And I wanted to, but…"**

**Brennan hefted herself off of the floor and backed up onto the couch, flopping down against the cushions. I looked over at the clock on the wall. Brennan and I had been sorting papers and going through possible factors of identification for almost two hours. "It's okay," Brennan said with a shrug to show she really didn't mind. "You see it. I don't anymore. I don't even know what's worse."**

**Angela joined Brennan on the couch. "You holding up okay?" She asked, looking over to me. I'd been slowly standing up and getting some paperclips, so I could clip the information together so we wouldn't have to go through it and do the same thing again. I wanted to pack the stuff up and go; I felt like I was intruding on their very personal conversation.**

**I sighed, unsure how to answer. I didn't want to lie; it was making me a little sad. Angela seemed sincere, so she obviously was worried about my feelings. On the other hand, it was something that I'd get over, and I was exercising the chance of my lifetime. Shouldn't I be excited and enthusiastic rather than tired and disappointed with the lack of results? I decided on honesty. Angela was a kind person and she would probably know if I was lying, anyway. "His wife doesn't believe it was him," I sighed. "I have to give her an ID."**

** "****Whatever I can do," Angela vowed. "And about this weekend…"**

** "****Angela, I don't know," Brennan said, obviously having been invited to something over the weekend.**

** "****Oh, come on."**

** "****I don't know."**

** "****Holly, I know this great club," Angela said, gearing her efforts at me. "They play Trip Hop and Trance."**

** "****I'm not certain what either of those are, beyond music styles," I told her.**

** "****It doesn't matter," Angela insisted. "We'll all go together. We'll grab Booth."**

** "****No," Brennan said quickly.**

** "****I think he likes you," Angela stated, smiling impishly at Brennan. "God, if I were you, I'd buy a ticket on ****_that _****ride."**

**I shuddered. "Ew. Seventeen year old kid in the room."**

**Brennan pointed over to her desk, where plastic storage boxes of bones were just able to be seen through the near-opaque containers. "Look, I'm going to be very busy this weekend. Even after this case, I have those."**

** "****Remains from World War One," Angela said with a disgruntled sigh.**

** "****That's what the institution pays me for," Brennan said insistently. "I've got hundreds of these waiting."**

** "****And they can't wait one more weekend?" Angela protested, on the fence between persuading and whining.**

** "****They've got relatives. They've waited long enough."**

**Angela rolled her eyes. "You know, it's not that scary, Brennan. You have a few drinks, move to the music." She gasped like this would be a miracle. "You might even smile!"**

**She was interrupted by a light rapping on the open door. I looked up to see Zach, standing patiently and waiting for his boss's attention. "The bones are clean," he stated.**

**Brennan stood up, reluctant to leave the comfy furniture and the comforts of her best friend. "I've got to run. You hang around. I may need you."**

* * *

><p><strong>The skeleton was laid in anatomical order in the bone room, where some equipment such as microscopes and magnifiers were set up and already wired to a monitor. Brennan, Zach, and I were back on the latex glove bandwagon, except Brennan was holding up a voice recorder to her mouth so that she could officially report her findings. "Comparing remains to details provided of Hamid Masruk, age 37, of Afghani origin," she intoned. She slowly walked down the length of the exam table while Zach and I stood at its front, waiting for her instructions. "Texture of pubic synthesis indicates age of bone consistent with Masruk, as is height."<strong>

**Zach raised his hand. Brennan nodded to him, pointing the recorder in his direction. "Complexity of the cranial vault sutures matches the statistical probability of age and descent," Zach stated.**

** "****Good," Brennan approved.**

** "****Too bad we can't tell why he did it," Angela sighed longingly. "Isn't that what we all really want to know?"**

** "****Permission to hypothesize," I asked. Brennan nodded, so I continued. "We've all been under the assumption that if this is Masruk, then he acted of his own free will, and he was a terrorist, and he planted the bomb. Is it at all possible that this is Masruk and he was actually the victim?"**

**Brennan nodded, taking this into consideration, and Angela looked surprised no one had thought of this earlier. "Maybe," Brennan ceded. "Uneven growth patterns in the vertebrae indicate malnourishment as a child."**

** "****Consistent with the diet where Masruk was from," I promptly added.**

** "****There's probably more evidence on the calvarium?" Zach phrased his statement as a question, looking to Brennan for confirmation of his theory.**

** "****Why don't you reconstruct the skull and check it out?" The anthropologist offered with a neutral expression.**

**Zach smiled and nodded. "My first cranial reconstruction," he stated with pride, smiling down at the exam table. I shook my head slightly. Most guys got excited about cars. Zach's enthusiasm for his career was not only endearing, but it was also refreshing. Most people thought about work as a chore; it was always nice to meet or hear about someone who actually enjoyed it and took pride in their skills.**

**Brennan nodded, satisfied with herself. She slowly walked back up the length of the exam table, where the pieces of the empty cranium stared up at her, the mandible detached and a few centimeters ahead of it. "Dr. Brennan, the fractures evident on the bottom of the feet are consistent with methods of torture in Afghanistan," I said quietly. Brennan needed to know, if she didn't already, but it was pretty horrible to think of a man being tortured in one country, coming to another for freedom and diplomacy, and then being blown up. "It's consistent with Masruk's history."**

**Brennan nodded, the same haunted look in her eyes that I was sure had flashed through mine. "I am convinced we have a statistical match." She released the button on the audio feed, turning the recording device off."**

** "****So Masruk is the bomber," Gibson clarified. Was he not listening at all?**

** "****Or the victim of a bomb attack," I edited his sentence.**

** "****What about the skull?" Gibson asked in skeptical confusion. "You're having a kid reconstruct it."**

**Brennan seemed as irritated by Gibson as I was. She lifted up a file folder of Masruk's history from a table. "This is an educational institute. He wants to learn. Is that okay with you?" She asked curtly, giving the impression that she didn't really care whether or not it was okay with him. "For forensic ID, we have all we need. Now I would like to get this data to Booth as soon as I can."**

** "****I'll take it," Gibson offered.**

**Brennan shook her head in disagreement. "I don't think so," she said firmly. "I work with Booth. That's my deal."**

** "****Dr. Brennan, I have jurisdiction," Gibson started to argue.**

**Brennan tilted her head coyly. "Then why don't I destroy my notes and let you guarantee the identity of the remains?" Common sense telling her that, no, Gibson would not like that over her handing them straight to Booth, Brennan walked confidently out of the room, her ponytail swishing on her neck.**

** "****It's best to just ride it out, like an earthquake," Angela advised the Homeland Security officer wisely.**


	7. The Man in the SUV, Part Two

In Booth's office, I found myself laughing alongside Brennan when I saw the FBI agent. I was unable to help but recall how Brennan had told me Booth had a lawyer lady friend named Tessa who he'd been… in bed with when she went over to tell him about the report while she drove me over. "Okay, what is so funny?" Booth demanded, miffed.

I covered my mouth, not doing much else to try to cover up my mirth. Brennan managed to say, "I just never figured you'd be in a relationship," through her giggles.

"Why?" Booth demanded, standing up from his chair in indignation. "Do you think something's wrong with me?"

"Not wrong," Brennan hurriedly corrected him. "You just have alpha male attributes usually associated with a solitary existence."

"What? Me! You're solitary!" Booth accused.

"No, I'm private," Brennan edited his sentence. "It's different, and we weren't talking about me."

"Well I was!"

"Well, I wasn't," Brennan shot back. "Look, I'm happy for you! Relationships have anthropological meaning. No society can survive if sexual bonds aren't formed betw-"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Booth demanded, his cheeks coloring slightly.

A burly officer popped his head in the office. "Booth."

"Yeah?" Booth asked, glad for the distraction from Brennan.

"You got that ID?" He asked gruffly, apparently incapable of speaking in whole sentences.

"Yeah," Booth replied. "It was Masruk."

"Oh, that's too bad," the guy said emotionlessly.

"He allegedly killed four people and injured another fifteen," Brennan pointed out, looking at the officer in horror, not understanding why he was disappointed a supposed mass murderer was dead.

The officer came into the room slightly, extending the file in his hand to Booth, who took it gingerly. "The report came back from ballistics. Now the explosives were planted _under _the car with, with the trigger connected to the odometer. Masruk was murdered."

"So Masruk wasn't a terrorist," I declared triumphantly. "I totally guessed it!"

"But someone sure tried to make him look like one," Booth sighed heavily. "Any leads on who did it?"

The other officer sneered at him. "That's why we're paying you, Booth."

* * *

><p>"We're very, very sorry, Mrs. Masruk," Booth said emotionally.<p>

Sahar didn't seem to care that she was being recorded. The interrogation room's cameras aren't secret. She was scared and hurt, and that made her angry. "I told you Hamid was the victim, but you wouldn't listen," she fired the insults steadily. For her part, she wasn't repeating and she wasn't threatening or cursing, so we couldn't do anything. "You couldn't imagine an Arab who's a peace-loving man."

"That's not true," Booth started, but was interrupted by the broken-hearted woman.

Sahar tilted her head in disbelief. "No?" She scoffed. "_We must investigate everything, Mrs. Masruk. We must turn your house upside down, because we believe your husband was a good man. _Is that the truth?"

"No!" Brennan declared loudly, her jaw dropping slightly at the woman's misinterpretation of the investigation. "They searched your house because Muslim extremists have declared war on the United States. Preliminary findings made your husband a suspect, which we are required-"

"It's not FBI policy to target or profile any ethnic group," Booth interrupted, trying to keep the atmosphere on our side relatively calm. "It wasn't our intention. I can understand why you may feel offended."

"I can't," Brennan disagreed stubbornly.

"Bones!" Booth hissed.

"What?" I asked, going to the anthropologists' defense. "She's been a part of a criminal investigation, that's all. Her rights as a citizen haven't been violated. Yes, it's unfortunate that her husband's ethnicity is a factor, but to say it isn't would be lying. This isn't a perfect world and after 9/11, our security has to encompass everything that's a possible risk to the country."

Booth frowned in frustration, his jawline becoming more pronounced. "I'm going to have to apologize for Dr. Brennan and my ward," he told Sahar apologetically.

"It's fine, Mr. Booth," Sahar said, sitting back down in her seat across from us with a sigh. She was calming down. It seemed that admitting that ethnicity had been a factor had been what she needed to understand that we weren't against her culture. "Honesty is always a welcome relief. So when can I bury him? When can I give him peace?"

Brennan met Sahar's eyes respectfully, keeping her voice low as another sign of respect. "There are certain body parts that I'm still examining. Others are still seared to the surface of the wreckage…"

Booth's leg moved and Brennan inhaled quickly, looking at Booth in indignant confusion. "I'm sure Mrs. Masruk doesn't really need to know the details," he said carefully.

"If we can retrieve more remains of her husband, Muslim law requires that we do," I told Booth earnestly. Just because I don't practice religion doesn't mean I can't respect it.

Brennan looked to Sahar again after nodding at Booth in agreement with me. "I spent some time in Iraq identifying bodies. I'll give you whatever I can so that he can be purified for burial."

Sahar nodded, swallowing back a sob. "Thank you." She turned her piercing gaze to Booth. "Is that all?"

"One last thing," I said gently. "A few calls were made to his cell phone from your house, only minutes before the blast."

Sahar looked down at the table, blinking rapidly. Ah. Guilt. I'd recognize the old companion anywhere. "Yes, we argued. It was a family matter. My final words to him were words of anger."

"I'm very sorry," Booth said sincerely. "It must be very painful." Sahar said silently for a moment, and when it became clear that we were done here, she stood up and collected her purse from the back of the chair. "If there's anything else you know that you can think of, just give us a call," Booth advised as she left the room.

As the door clicked shut behind her, I heaved a sigh and stood up laboriously. "Well, between the three of us," I said casually. "I think she's having an affair." I shrugged. "That's my opinion."

* * *

><p>"She was having an affair!" Booth exclaimed again as he took a seat at the bar. Brennan pulled up a chair next to him and I hung back for a moment before climbing in one on the agent's other side. Booth agreed with me on my affair theory, so I'd rather not push Brennan to be in the middle of the conflict – literally.<p>

While Booth and Brennan ordered expensive martinis with little alcohol content, I waved off the bar tender's offer of anything to drink. I didn't have much money to spend on restaurants. As it was, until I got back out of FBI protection, I'd be unable to resume my job at the bar, and therefore wouldn't be paid. I'd have to dig into the envelope where I stashed the extra dollar bills just to buy the groceries I'd need for the upcoming month.

"I'm sorry, but that's an offensive assumption!" Brennan declared, not sounding sorry in the least.

"Well, all the signs are there," Booth shrugged.

"You can't make wild accusations about somebody's personal life based on a feeling!" I was really starting to regret bringing up my suspicions.

"It's more than a feeling!" Booth pushed. "The photographs of her and her husband are evidence just as solid as the markers you squints pick up looking at your little bones!"

"The evidence that I find isn't empirical. What you consider evidence is merely conjecture!"

"She dyed her hair, lost weight – you know she shoved a little Botox in her forehead. She's still feeling guilty over the last fight she had with her husband," Booth tried to reason with her, but his efforts were fruitless.

Brennan groaned, her elbows knocking on the table as she put her head in her hands in frustration. "You are an insufferable – arrogant… man!"

"Oh!" Booth puffed in disdain. "So only a woman could know a woman. Holly's the one that said it first!"

I cringed, drawing my arms back across my chest protectively. "Please don't bring me into this. I'm a minor. My words mean nothing."

Booth slapped the bar table with his hand, exasperated. "I thought women wanted us to understand them!"

Angela appeared on my other side practically out of thin air. She pulled the chair out and set her champagne glass on the countertop, tapping her manicured red nails on the surface while she leaned forward to see all three of us at once. "Not really," she explained. "A magician never wants to reveal her tricks."

Booth gave her a look, his eyes narrowed. "We're having a private conversation."

Angela raised her hands up, shaking her head with wide doe-like eyes. "I'm not here."

"I'm not either," I agreed, making the same gesture as Angela.

Brennan wasn't ready to give Booth a rest. "So you think you know women just because you live with some sexy lawyer? Unbelievable!"

Booth scoffed, but Angela's eyebrows flew up to her hairline and threatened to disappear. "You live with a sexy lawyer?"

Booth twitched. "She has her own place, okay!"

Brennan leaned around Booth and I leaned back so she could see Angela better. "He thinks that just because Masruk's wife started working out and had a little make over, that she was having an affair!" Thank you, Brennan. I appreciate not being included. Sincerely. Really, I do.

Angela hummed to herself. "How long were they married?"

"Eleven years," I supplied.

Angela winced and looked back to Brennan, jerking her thumb at Booth. "I'm with him."

"There is no concrete proof!" Brennan shouted slightly but her voice was lost in the naturally loud volume of the bar. "I don't believe this! If you're so sure, then why didn't you confront her?"

"Because if she or her boyfriend were involved, she would warn him," Angela said instantly.

Booth nodded sideways at her. "Very good."

"I'm a constant surprise."

Brennan got up, leaving her only half-finished martini on the bar. She slapped down a ten dollar bill next to it and snatched her purse up and hitched it over her shoulder. "Great. I will be in the lab, getting us some real data."

Booth sighed and Angela smirked coyly. "So, how many nights a week does Sexy sleep over?"

"Ha, ha, ha," Booth laughed sarcastically, not dignifying that with an answer.

* * *

><p>I loomed over Zach's shoulder curiously, watching him carefully attempt to fit the cranium back together. I rocked back and forth on my heels as Brennan joined Zach, Hodgins, and I on the platform. Brennan looked to Zach as she deftly swiped her security card. "How's it coming?"<p>

Zach's sigh seemed disappointed and mildly miserable. "The ethnoid and sphenoid fragments won't fit together," I supplied. "I'll tell you what, give the guy a thousand piece puzzle and it'll probably be done in fifteen minutes. A cranial reconstruction? It's three-dimensional, horribly disfigured, smashed into bits, and he got over half of it put together in half an hour. And now he's complaining because he's having a bit of trouble," I said in amusement.

All we'd actually really accomplished this morning while Brennan went over files was talk a bit while Zach and Hodgins worked. Seeing as no one knew exactly how large my intelligence was in forensics, Booth had mostly just dropped me off in Brennan's care again for the time being and more or less demanded the squints to entertain me. Of course, Brennan wasn't the only person watching over me. I was with one of the scientists at all times, although usually it was Zach or Hodgins. I'd talked to Angela for a while, and I'd done some basic translating from Arabic over Brennan's shoulder for her, passing it off as another unorthodox hobby. During which time I learned that Zach lived above Hodgins' garage, which was cool. They were good friends. Zach had also said that, instead of awkwardly pointing speech at him, I could call him Zach. I'd been unsure what an appropriate (but also respectful) title of address would be. He was a scientist, yes, and he was working towards a doctorate, but he wasn't technically a doctor yet. So, that cleared things up.

Actually, he made the whole conversation a bit weird because he said that his current friends insisted on calling him Zach 'for some reason' aside from Zachary, and said that he saw no reason for me not to jump on the bandwagon. He didn't use that expression, of course, but it's a loose translation.

Brennan sighed in mild irritation. "Zach, I would like to return the remains to the widow before _her _demise."

"I'm doing by best, Dr. Brennan," Zach defended himself weakly, looking up at his mentor with big puppy dog eyes of confusion. "The integrity of the bone seems to be compromised. I don't know if it's the metal fragments from the blast…"

"I examined the chemicals used in the explosives," Hodgins pitched in helpfully. "The perchlorates I found can have a degenerative effect."

Brennan denied the easy explanation. "Not this quickly. Excuse me." Hodgins rolled his spindly chair away from his microscope to let Brennan look through. "Unusually soft bone tissue," she said in a slightly distant tone of voice that I was quickly beginning to learn meant she noticed or realized something. "You know, this has nothing to do with the blast. I owe you an apology, Zach." Zach brightened up and his posture became less slouchy. Aw, he was like a puppy trying to please his mistress. Cute. "Do you have his medicals? Stiff joints, facial disfigurement. There's a disorganized trabecula pattern here that his doctors wouldn't have been able to see. It could have been a degenerative disease."

"I don't get it. How does his medical condition figure into the murder?" Hodgins groaned in frustration, throwing his hands in the air.

"Now it's a murder," Brennan pointed out decisively. "Before it was terrorism, because we didn't have all the fact. You don't overlook anything when you're looking for the truth."

"Could you check for lupus?" I asked the entomologist. "Is there enough tissue? It was in the records that his doctors were testing, but the results didn't come back before his death."

Hodgins nodded slightly. "Yeah, there should be enough tissue to manage it."

"Also check for pagets," Brennan requested. "If those come back negative, he might have been exposed to a toxin which would mean his brother was, too."

"The facial scarring was similar," I recalled. "I can call Booth and ask him to pull Farid Masruk's medical records."

"Good idea," Brennan praised. She gave praise to me more than her other colleagues, likely because I was an adolescent who technically had a very good excuse for not knowing (namely, not going to college), but I would take it anyway. "Tell him to fax them to my office." Shoes clicking, she sped back down the stairs and off the hallway that shot down towards her office.

Hodgins sighed deeply, shaking his head. "I graduated top of my class, Rhode Scholar, youngest member inducted into the Academy of Physical Sciences, but she _still _makes me feel like a cretin," he shared with an exasperated frown.

Zach looked up to Hodgins with a light smirk. "She apologized to me," he stated. It was matter-of-fact, but I had the distinct feeling that Zach was bragging as best as he could. Judging from the dirty look Hodgins sent the grad student, I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

* * *

><p>Farid lived in an apartment not far from the center of town. His apartment was spacious even though it was small, mostly because his belongings were organized. Other than furniture, there wasn't really anything on the floor, and everything was put where it belonged. The furniture was all dark colors, so it was easy on the eyes. The only thing that seemed a little weird to me was a candelabra on the dining room table, but it looked cool anyway.<p>

"Yes, I am a Christian," Farid nodded, verifying Booth's clarifying question.

"Yet Sahar and Hamid were Muslim." Although it was posed as a statement, the message of the question beneath went through.

"I converted," Farid said with a half-shrug. "Hamid could never accept it. Religious differences caused too many problems."

Brennan nodded, accepting the answer. "It seems to be a consistent fact throughout history."

Farid didn't seem to know quite how to respond for a moment before settling on, "I tried to make peace with my brother, but it was difficult. There was more than religion between us."

"Sahar mentioned that there was some family problems," Booth prodded.

"Yes."

"I can understand how delicate it can be."

"Did she tell you any more than that?" Farid worried his lower lip in anxiety.

"No, but if you have any other information that could help us in the investigation, it could speed things along," I pushed slightly, but he really shouldn't be concealing information like that from the FBI.

"It's not my place," Farid excused, looking chastened.

"We're just trying to find out who killed your brother," Booth declared.

Farid swallowed nervously before confessing, "Sahar was seeing another man, but I can't believe she'd hurt my brother." Oh! If it wouldn't be incredibly insensitive, I'd fist-pump because I was right.

Brennan sent Booth a sideways glare when he smirked at her. "Do you know who this other man is or is it just a… _feeling _you have?" Ouch, that hurts.

"I've met him," Farid said, blinking at the obvious tension. "Ali Ladjavardi. He worked with Hamid at the friendship league. I wanted Hamid to confront Ladjavardi." Somehow that doesn't seem like a very good idea to me. At all.

Brennan leaned forward, now interested as she believed now that the affair was factual. "Did both you and Hamid have contact with Ladjavardi?"

"Yes, once," Farid nodded, looking over to his bedroom door. His gaze flickered back to us as soon as he realized what he was doing. I squinted at him for a moment; that was weird… then again, he probably would want to retreat to his bedroom and take a Tylenol and a nap as soon as we left. "Hamid, my brother brought me to meet him. Sharing a meal is a gesture of peace. I was trying to save their marriage, but Sahar and Ladjavardi were not going to stop their affair. So I told Hamid to repudiate her."

"Sorry?" Booth asked, making a face like he thought Farid must have misspoken.

"It's a divorce method called Talak in Muslim law," I explained to him under my breath. At the time I had hated the social studies class in my school system when it wanted us to learn about the Middle-Eastern country's culture; then again, when I went through that unit four years ago in 2001, it had been at the end of the spring semester. Tensions had been high from the terrorism attacks on the WTC, and even I'd been still getting over 9/11, and still visibly showing the trauma I'd been dealt when the plane hit the tower I'd been in. However, now the information was benefitting me well.

"I still respected his traditions," Farid agreed with my statement.

Brennan scooted forward on her chair to observe the Muslim-turned-Christian. "You and your brother seem to share a medical condition."

"Yes," Farid supplied amiably, then asked, "Why is that important?"

Booth cringed at Brennan's abrupt change in topic. "We don't mean to embarrass you, but Dr. Brennan is just trying to figure out the condition. That's a routine part of the investigation."

"Have you seen a doctor?" I inquired.

"Yes," Farid confirmed. "He believes it's a genetic disorder we shared. He was going to call Hamid's physician to discuss it."

Brennan tilted her head. "Would you mind if we saw your medical records?"

"Of course not. If I could be helped, I welcome it."

* * *

><p>"Something about Farid Masruk seems off," I confided in Angela, Zach, and Hodgins later while Brennan and Booth got the interrogation room ready.<p>

"Yeah? Would that be the torturous emotional agony or the genetic disease that scars his face?" Hodgins asked sarcastically, like I'd made a rather pointless observation.

I shook my head, not in the mood to get temperamental. "No, I mean, Hamid only died a couple of days ago, and Farid found out even later than that that it was a positive ID. But he's already talking about his brother in the past tense."

"That's what happens when someone dies," Zach said smartly, going back over the skeleton of Hamid Masruk, which was on the exam table. "Their consciousness becomes no longer existent, and therefore it existed in the past, hence it is referenced in past tense."

I rolled my eyes, not really irritated. It was mostly for show. "It takes a while for people to come to grips with the deaths of people close to them. As a general rule, for an indefinite amount of time, people will still talk about their deceased as if they were still alive. It's a way of mentally shielding themselves and giving themselves time to adapt to the change and mourn. Farid was already directly addressing his brother in the past tense without a stitch, like he'd known before we told him that we had a positive ID. Something seems fishy about that to me," I explained.

Hodgins snorted, bemused. "First you're a scientist, then a junior federal agent, now you're a psychologist? What's next? Instrumentalist?"

"Yes, actually," I said, completely serious. "I play violin." That was true; one of my few permanent belongings that I always loved was my violin. It needed to be retuned, because I hadn't really had time to play it recently, but I was proud of myself for keeping it in mostly-pristine shape. I got a deadpan look from Angela and Hodgins and I shrugged. "I read a lot and since I graduated early, I keep myself sharp by signing up for online college classes sometimes." It's informative and good for keeping myself entertained at an intellectual level, but it's not like they actually qualify me for anything.

"Right," Angela said, smiling at me. "Totally normal, sweetie." Totally not, but thanks anyway, Angela. She circled around to Zach, trying to indulge him in gossip once more. "Apparently, Booth and Sexy live together a few days a week, but he was very clear that she has her own place."

"Should you be intruding into their lives like this?" Zach asked uneasily.

"Oh, yeah," Angela said, her expression completely serious. "Absolutely."

Hodgins looked back from the reports that he got scanned to his computer. "We're negative for lupus and pagets. When you're done, I'll do a scraping for environmental contaminates," he added to Zach.

Zach looked to the equipment table next to him before lightly picking up a Petri dish. He passed it over to the entomologist. "I found these. Shiny flakes that caught onto the torn patches of bone."

"Bottom line, I still think Brennan has a shot with Booth," Angela finished, still trying to get people to talk about Booth and Brennan's social lives with her.

"But she says she's not interested," Hodgins reminded Angela dryly.

Angela raised her eyebrows challengingly. "Me thinks the lady doth protest too much."

"Maybe she protested just enough," Zach countered loyally, trying to imitate Angela's Shakespearean style.

Angela rolled her eyes. "Please. She's been sleeping alone for months! She has enough pent-up sexual energy to power a small mid-western city!"

I sighed. I really didn't need to hear this. "I'm still here, and I'm still legally a kid."

"This looks like gypsum," Hodgins interrupted Angela for all of our sakes. _My hero! _That wouldn't cause any organic damage. It's probably used to insulate the explosives. I bet the FBI doesn't know that yet." Insert cocky smirk here.

Angela pursed her lips, frustrated that no one else seemed to care about Brennan's bedroom habits. I'm not entirely sure why she's surprised. "I'm going to go check out this girlfriend," she stressed, picking up her purse from where it hung on the railing.

* * *

><p>I sat in the backseat of Booth's SUV. Brennan had come back to get me while Booth was interrogating Ladjavardi, only for us to come back and find that the same rude agent as before had completely burned us! He freed Ladjavardi, even though he had admitted to the affair (a good motive for murder), just because he worked for Homeland Security. Homeland Security is really starting to piss me off. Now we were going back to the lab – we still needed to go through Farid's med records and cross check them with Hamid's. As the light turned green but the cars ahead still stayed stationary, Booth honked his horn, hitting the steering wheel violently with his fist. "C'mon!" He shouted.<p>

"Do you want me to drive?" Brennan offered, a concerned look gracing her features.

"No, why?" Booth asked, quickly questioning her.

"You're angry," I stated truthfully.

Booth laughed, but it was forced. "I'm not angry!"

"You're furious. You might kill somebody," I said, not really serious about the last part.

"I'm not angry." Even though Booth said he wasn't, he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white with the lack of blood circulation. "Believe me, you do not want to see me angry. That is the last thing you want to see."

"Okay," Brennan agreed simply.

"This is me, accepting reality."

"Okay, my mistake," I surrendered.

"My superiors, they make the decisions. Alright? They don't think them through, well, that's really not my problem."

"If I were you, I'd be mad," Brennan observed. "Homeland Security is preventing you from doing a proper investigation of a murder case."

"I'm a grownup," Booth continued in his tirade. "I'll deal. You know that thing where you ask for the strength to change the things that you can and the wisdom to know the difference?"

"Not really," Brennan and I both replied in accidental synchrony.

"Well, it's a good thing," Booth said decisively, taking a deep breath and starting to calm down.

"Who do you ask?" Brennan questioned curiously.

"For what?"

"For the strength and the wisdom."

Booth gave her a look of disbelief, like he seriously thought she should already know the answer to that. "God."

"And that works?" She prodded skeptically.

"Can we talk about something else?"

"Sure!" I said happily, eager to get off of the topic of religion. I leaned forward as far as I could while still wearing the seatbelt. "So how did you meet Tessa?"

"Tessa!?" Booth exclaimed, surprised, before quickly getting over it. "No! Why do you want to talk about Tessa?"

"Why not?" I countered. Booth tensed, and I rolled my eyes at his stupid behavior. "Alright, fine. We won't talk about Tessa."

"I prefer if we would just stay on point and talk about things that you like to talk about. Like, dead people. Dead bodies?"

"Sure, sure," Brennan nodded, finding a way to turn this against him, too. "You've killed a lot of people, right? When you were a sniper?"

"Maybe we shouldn't talk at all," Booth muttered.

"Right, because you're angry," I triumphantly repeated my earlier sentiments.

"Not angry!" Booth corrected. "I'm not."

Brennan's eyes softened in sympathy. "We'll find out who killed him, Booth. We've got Hamid's body." She paused and sighed. "You can always count on the dead."


	8. The Man in the SUV, Part Three

"When we get the brother's medicals, I want them matched to Hamid's," Brennan declared as soon as she was within hearing range of Hodgins and Zach.

Hodgins handed over a piece of paper to his boss. "I'm starting on a tox screen," he announced.

"Farid said his doctor suspected a genetic condition," Brennan shared adroitly. "Maybe we are overlooking something." I narrowed my eyes at a little device lying on the exam table in place of Masruk's bones. "What is that?" Brennan asked, noticing it as well.

Zach promptly answered his boss. "We used the trace elements we recovered to try and build the bomb. It might give you another link."

"Isn't the FBI working on that?" Brennan stated suspiciously, her eyes darting between her colleagues.

"Yes, this is just for fun," Hodgins said with a smile.

"To see who's better?" I guessed.

"Maybe." Pause. "A little." Another pause. "Yeah."

Brennan shrugged slightly. "Good luck."

Zach looked up from his table, softly holding up the repaired cranium. "Ta-da," he announced, holding it up to Brennan, who took it and turned it in her hand.

"Nice job," she praised. "No wonder you had such trouble with reconstruction. Look at the spread of the trabecular pattern in the bone."

"Microscopic fissures, like cracks," Zach explained to Hodgins, who hadn't even asked.

"I knew that," Hodgins replied with a scoff.

Zach smiled faintly. "I don't think so." I snickered.

"Can we focus?" Brennan requested sharply. "The spread is too rapid for any organic bone disease or genetic condition. It's definitely a toxin. Is there any surviving marrow to test?"

Zach nodded, keeping his head down longer than necessary in means of respectful apology to make up for annoying Brennan. "Uh, I'll try to find some," he promised.

"Let's do it." Brennan said determinedly.

* * *

><p>"The marrow's degraded." Hodgins spoke in frustration, raking his hands through his hair. The result wasn't as good as it was when some people do the same. He looked like he wore a drowned rat on his head – but it would be rude to say so, so I didn't. Hodgins had been nothing but nice to me, when I'd given more than a sufficient number of opportunities for a cheap shot or insult. "I can give you basics, but that's it."<p>

"According to these tests, the liver function was impaired." I reported, having looked at the results of the scans over Hodgins' shoulder.

"That's congruent with our theory. His body was trying to get rid of whatever was poisoning him," Brennan agreed.

Angela joined with a victorious, sly smile in place. She slid her purse down her shoulder and leaned on the rails, not picking up on the gravity of the conversation – either that, or she simply didn't care. "There is trouble in paradise," she sang, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

"I beg your pardon?" Brennan asked, frowning at her friend.

Angela took this as invitation to attempt to start gossip hour. She leaned forward, engaging herself further. "Tessa does not feel secure in that relationship. I think she's threatened by you."

"You talked to her," Brennan stated in surprise.

Angela didn't seem to realize that she was the only one interested. Her smile widened, taking Brennan's not stopping her as a sign to continue. "She didn't say much, but even though she has a _phenomenal _figure, she was chowing down on a fat-free muffin and she was reading a book about unsolved FBI cases."

"Definitely feeling insecure." I let the phrase slip before I caught myself. I slapped my hand over my mouth, scowling. Why wasn't I watching myself around these people? I was sure my expression was horrified. "Why did I just say that? I don't even care!"

Angela's smile grew, if that was even possible. Hodgins turned to Brennan, a look of complete shock evident. "She's spying for you?"

"No!" Brennan's cheeks colored slightly. "No!"

Zach looked curiously from between Angela and Brennan before studiously informing his mentor of his thoughts, not seeing the problem with this conversation or his input. "Even if you have nothing in common, it's difficult to sublimate intense sexual attraction, and we hear it's been a while."

"Okay, stop!" Brennan nearly shouted, holding her hands up for emphasis.

"Please!" I added.

Angela shook her head in disappointment. "He is there for the taking, honey," she urged again.

Booth strolled through the doors then and came up to the edge of the platform, hands shoved in his pockets. "Okay, I couldn't get his medical records." Angela whistled lowly, Hodgins was trying not to laugh, Zach was looking uncertainly between all of us, Brennan was intentionally not meeting his gaze, and I was pretty sure my cheeks were pink as I averted my eyes to the floor. "What?"

"Nothing," Brennan quickly lied.

"Trying to track down the doctor?" He guessed.

No. Nowhere near. All we're doing is listening as Angela gets herself involved in your sex life… You know what, yeah. We were looking for the doctor. It sounds much better. Yeah, let's go with that.

"We don't need him," Brennan said instead. "It's definitely a toxin, but we can't determine what kind."

"Too bad the liver is cooked, that could tell us everything," Zach sighed.

Booth shook his head, annoyed. "You know, I need subtitles, walking in here."

"The liver is like a filter. It would contain evidence of any toxins, but we don't have the liver or any of the flesh left," I translated for the agent, who nodded at me in appreciation.

"See? Why can't any of you people talk like her and actually pretend to be normal?" Booth complained.

"We do have the beetles," Hodgins stated mildly upon the realization. "They ate Hamid's flesh, and whatever organs remained. We all know we are what we eat."

I grimaced. "Please don't class us in the same category as flesh-eating, scavenging beetles."

"So you can ID the poison from the beetles?" Booth asked hopefully.

* * *

><p>In Hodgins' and Zach's lab, by the terrarium, Zach clutched a jar of the beetles close to his chest protectively. I half wanted to laugh, half cry at his emotional display. It was funny because it was beetles and… well, it was Zach. But then it was saddening because Zach saw them as pets and it was sort of reminiscent of <em>Marley and Me<em>. "You can't kill them," Zach protested weakly. "They have names."

Brennan reached into the jar and pulled out a handful, cupping her other hand under in case some wriggled their way free. She wore thick latex gloves in case they tried to bite her. Ew. "We have to, Zach. Some," Brennan said in a best attempt at a soothing voice.

Hodgins raised his eyebrows at Zach and I knew that he was going to say something to purposefully bother the young intern. "In Thailand, they are sautéed in peanut oil. Yum."

Zach made a face of sadness and he put the cap back on the jar, holding the beetles even closer to himself if that was possible. I winced sympathetically and patted Zach on the shoulder. I wasn't one for physical contact with people I didn't particularly know, but the guy looked like Hodgins had just run over his puppy with a monster truck. "It's alright, Zach," I said helpfully. "On the bright side, they won't have to put up with living in a jar anymore," I reasoned.

Zach gave me a look that suggested he thought I was being stupid. "How can that be a bright side if they're also dead? They wouldn't be able to take leisure in larger living quarters." He stated sadly.

I bit my lip and looked to Hodgins, who shrugged.

* * *

><p>I eagerly ran ahead of Hodgins and Zach, who had shared the results of the tests with me. I skidded to a stop by the metal stairs to the platform, where Angela and Brennan were quietly conversing. Booth was coming around from the entrance to the building, speeding up when he saw my excited expression.<p>

Booth came up by me and nudged my shoulder. I shied away and looked at him in question, not completely rejecting the cry for attention. "Yeah?"

"Are you doing okay?" He asked authoritatively, but his concern was both evident and earnest. I could understand why he wanted to know; I was sort of his ward for the time being, until Martin Davis' murder was solved. If I was traumatized, the cost of a psychotherapist would probably be charged to his tab. Aside from that was the ingrained instinct behind all humans' DNA to protect the youths of the civilization. And aside from that, I don't think I knew anyone a week ago who could have been able to see and experience all of what I had and take it all in such stride. Then again, while slim, there was also the possibility that he was asking out of concern for me.

"Yeah, fine," I said sincerely, trying to both answer quickly and skip over the emotional part of the day and not sound sarcastic. "I'm fine."

"We've got it!" Hodgins declared triumphantly as he and Zach caught up. "They were poisoned by dioxin, a very pure form."

I anxiously picked up when the entomologist paused, jumping at the opportunity to blow off some excitement. Regaining my cheer from before Booth had had a hushed 'you holding up' sentiment, I rocked back on the balls of my feet, beaming up at the artist and anthropologist. "It would stay in the system for years; cause cancer, diabetes, heart attack, and the facial system bone degeneration we saw!"

"Give me the saturation levels," Brennan ordered, her attention raptly turning away from the social conversation she'd been having. "Angela can use it in simulation to give us approximate date of ingestion."

"How much would it take to poison them?" Booth asked, pulling his hands out of his pockets and holding his arms up in a half shrug, listening for an answer intently.

"Just a little slipped into their food." Something dawned on Brennan and she inclined her head in realization. "Like at that lunch they had with Sahar's lover."

Angela looked down to Booth, looking after Brennan suggestively. "Impressed?"

Five minutes later, in Angela's dimly-lit office, the hologram projector was on and working, waiting patiently to simulate a scenario while Angela entered all of the information it needed first. "Dioxin levels were 5600 parts per trillion," Brennan said, pausing to give Angela time to enter that. "Speed of bone degeneration is an 88 percent increase over base line osteoporosis. Date of death was-"

Angela interrupted softly. "I remember that one, thanks."

Brennan looked to her friend and recognized the sad mood. She hesitated before nodding. "Run the scenario."

"I'll never get used to this," Booth said as the plain reconstruction began to glow as it transformed into the now-familiar image of Hamid Masruk.

"Yeah?" Angela smirked coyly. "Chicks with toys?"

Booth looked at the holograph as it morphed, taking into account the poison, and Hamid's face changed to account for the scars and misconfiguration. "Poor bastard," Booth whispered.

Brennan temporarily lifted her sharp look from the generator. "Match it to his INS photograph. See how accurate you are." Next to the model, a two dimensional picture, recent picture of Hamid flashed as the points between the two objects were matched. All of the points of identification lit up green. They matched perfectly, ratifying our scenario. "Good work, Angela. Probable date of exposure, about four months ago. I'd say the first week in June."

Booth exhaled deeply. "Holly, Bones, let's go pay a visit to Mr. Ladjavardi."

And that's how, roughly ninety minutes later, I was quickly speed-walking with Brennan and Booth down the sidewalk, approached Ladjavardi rapidly. "I thought you were told to stay away from him?" I asked quietly, looking up at Booth inquisitively.

"Yeah, and as an FBI agent, I cannot disobey my superior." Booth grinned slyly down at me. "You, however… you're not an FBI agent."

I nodded, a smirk creeping onto my face. I pushed myself into a light jog, rushing past Brennan and leaving Booth behind and coming up by Ladjavardi's side. He was Arabian, of course, with cropped brown hair and casual clothing fit for a day in the park. "Hey!" I called, friendlily waving to him. I overdid it on the 'friendly' fort, mostly because I was trying so hard to get his attention. "Hi! How you doin'?" Yeah, definitely got his attention.

Ladjavardi paused and stopped, looking to me with narrowed, hostile eyes, but caught sight of Booth as he did so. "What the hell are you doing here? You had orders!"

"Who's that?" I asked, looking to the FBI agent, who shrugged at me as if agreeing that we didn't know each other. "I don't know him. Do you know him? You should be nicer to your friends."

Ladjavardi sneered, looking from Booth to myself. "Nice," he growled at the agent. "You couldn't interrogate me yourself, so now you're asking your daughter to do it for you?"

I glared, my friendly façade going in an instant. I didn't have family, and that was a blatant reminder. "He is _not _my father," I spat, right as Booth denied that I was his daughter.

"Right," Ladjavardi scoffed.

"I just have some quick questions for you," I pushed, maneuvering myself in front of him so he couldn't get away. I stood at my full height and rolled my shoulders. Although I was a girl, I grew up in a not-so-nice manner, and I had a tomboy personality to begin with. The labor and fighting I do, coupled with my lifestyle, make me stronger than most people my age, and my shoulders broader than most girls' from continuous strain. That and my height made me appear pretty intimidating when I wanted.

Ladjavardi took one look at me, Booth, and then at Brennan, and we all had him with only one way out, and unless he could scale a tree in less than five seconds, he wasn't getting away. He sighed, realizing this, and quickly gave us an excuse. "Look, I'm not involved in this. Sahar won't even talk to me anymore."

"Yeah, I wonder why?" Brennan said, displaying a show of sarcasm.

Ladjavardi withdrew his cell phone from his trouser pocket. "I'm calling Santana."

Although I didn't know who that was, I understood the threat and came to the conclusion that it must be someone in the FBI. "I don't think so," I disagreed, taking a step closer.

Ladjavardi's eyes narrowed at me once more. "I'm warning you-"

"I wouldn't threaten her if I were you," Brennan advised, her expression being replaced with one of mild interest.

"I just want to know where you were in the first week of June to see if you poisoned the Masruk brothers," I said insistently.

"Subtle," Booth muttered.

Ladjavardi looked around us all scornfully. "I'm leaving. That's it." He shoved his phone away and reached out. He roughly grasped my shoulder, pushing my away. Without thinking about it, at the almost painful grip, I swung my arm up and set a vice grip on his upper arm. I twisted around, bending over, and ducked my head. Ladjavardi was pulled over and I slashed the air with my arm, sending him flying over me. He landed on the pavement, groaning, on his back.

Booth flinched. "We told you. She doesn't like to be touched."

"I didn't poison anybody," Ladjavardi moaned, his hand moving up to massage his shoulder (which had been given a damn good pull).

"Then tell me where you were!" I demanded fiercely. "I'm not opposed to flipping you again!"

"In Utah for training with Homeland Security!" Ladjavardi coughed, shuddering slightly as he tried to regain enough wind to struggle to his feet. "I didn't get back to DC until April 12th. Check with the department!"

I nodded, satisfied, and forced my expression to calm. I'm first in line to admit I'm dangerous and can be frightening. I have anger management issues and trauma (from being abused, obviously) and I never did get a psychologist after I was in the WTC on 9/11, but I have gotten capable of putting a cap on my anger for an amount of time over the years. I didn't want anyone to think I was unstable – my psychological damage only reflected my behavior in the respect that I had one hell of a temper. "Alright, thanks," I said with mock cheerfulness.

* * *

><p>I sighed, exaggerating my exasperation to Zach so that I knew for sure he would catch on. "I just can't believe that Ladjavardi wouldn't answer a simple question until I flipped him! I mean, his alibi checked out, so what was he so opposed to?"<p>

Hodgins rushed to the two of us. Really, Zach was just flipping through a comic while we waited for Hodgins' test results and while I complained to him. He was being really nice about it. He was likely ignoring me, but he wasn't telling me to shut up, so I'd take it. "The insulation they used is gypsum based with plaster and lead, mixed with asbestos!" He beamed at the both of us. "Know what else? It's a fire proof tile used excessively in the Woodley Park neighborhood when it was founded in 1910."

I shot up in my chair, the wheels sending it skittering backwards. My hair flew up, the twists I'd made with my fingers falling out. "Woodley Park?" I repeated, hands balling into fists. That's… that's where Farid Masruk lives…

He converted to Christianity but stayed so close to his Muslim brother and sister-in-law. He sure was quick getting over Hamid Masruk's death, and he was certainly willing enough to point fingers at Ladjavardi. Farid went to college… I didn't think to check at the time, but it was possible he'd taken chemistry courses… of course, bomb-making instructions were easily found online, in this day and age. And the timeline fits. He poisoned himself so he wouldn't be suspect if the poison lead was traced.

"Yeah," Hodgins said, nodding slowly at my abrupt change in demeanor. My eyes widened before I snapped into action, like a rubber band pulled taut and released suddenly. I snatched up my wallet (it has my debit card, ID, and some bills) from Brennan's desktop and ran out the door.

"Where are you going?" Hodgins shouted behind me, confused.

"To be the hero!" I muttered to myself, even as I ran down the hall. My height was working to my advantage; my long strides and agile speed were making it easy to bolt down the corridor and to the large double-door exit.

I took the steps leading into the Jeffersonian Institution two and three at a time, sprinting down frantically to the taxi stop, where a couple of yellow cabs were waiting patiently for someone to escort. I held onto the railing so I wouldn't fall on my face (that would be lame) and continued to run when I hit the bottom, leaping over the back of a bench in my hurry to cross the lawn and get to the cab service.

A taxi driver put away a book (_The Curious Incident of the Boy and the Dog in the Nighttime) _and started the ignition. "Destination?" He asked, not questioning my frantic dash.

"Woodley Park neighborhood," I panted. "The apartment complex on LeAnna street."

The driver seemed to take an agonizingly long time to get out into the main flow of traffic. When we were halfway there, I was antsy and my legs kept tapping – it was out of my control. Although barely seven minutes had passed, according to the built-in digital clock of the automobile, I felt as though it had taken an hour.

"Hey, could you speed up?" I finally asked impatiently.

"I'm going the speed limit, miss," the taxi driver replied patiently.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, I can see that. This is really important, so if you could please go more than forty-five?"

The taxi driver shot me a look through the rearview mirror. "What kind of emergency?"

"That's FBI-worthy, first-class, this-only-happens-in-movies emergency. Maybe even a 9/11 emergency."

The taxi driver sighed, but I noticed that the buildings passed quicker than they had before. "I'm still stopping at red lights," he maintained.

"Yeah, yeah."

So, three minutes later, I opened the door before the car was even parked and threw a ten dollar bill into the passenger's seat. I shoved my wallet back into my pocket as I ran, squinting my eyes against the air slapping my face. I hit a rush of cooler air as I hit the doors of Farid Masruk's apartment building, the vents caressing me with sweet, sweet bliss from the hot April weather. I didn't take more than about a second to enjoy the ventilation system, instead leaping up the stairs.

When I identified Farid's apartment by the doorstep 'welcome' mat, I knocked on the door. When I got no reply, I banged on it with my fists and kicked with one of my shoes, keeping my precarious balance on my other foot. "FARID MASRUK!" I bellowed at the top of my lungs.

Several other doors in the hall opened. "What in the blazes do you think you're doing?" A middle-aged man demanded of me, crankily staggering down the hallway. He had on an ill-fitting pair of pajama trunks and a robe on over it. Someone's a late riser. "If you don't knock it off, I'll call the police!"

I turned my back to the door, gasping for breath and looking down the aisle of curious, worried, and irate people. Most of them got wide eyes when they recognized me from the newspaper, including the man challenging me. "Holly Kirkland!" I yelled, in case they didn't recognize my photograph. "I'm with the FBI! You know what?" I challenged, addressing the man. "You can call the police. Please do. Connect them with the FBI and tell them that their café SUV terrorist is Farid Masruk, Apt. 79, LeAnna street, Woodley Park."

I turned back to the door and then realized that after that outburst, no way in bloody hell would Farid open the door now. I stalked backwards a few paces, then ran forward, hitting the door with my shoulder. "Ah-!" I hissed in surprise. It hurt a lot more than I was expecting, but I heard the lock break and I shrugged it off, kicking the door open.

I intruded into the man's home, going straight past the living room I'd been in with Booth and Brennan. Farid was smart, I'd give him that, and he wasn't that stupid. I went straight to the bedroom instead. Scattered out on the desk was chemical components and equipment.

I approached the desk, reading labels but only picking up a roll of electrical tape. The end of the tape roll was peeling upwards, indicating that it'd been cut not long ago. Several bottles were lacking their tops, and I held my hand over one before raising my hand to my nose and inhaling. The strong acetic smell of potent chemicals made my stomach lurch. Unable to justify not panicking, I came to the conclusion that my initial thought was right.

A bomb had been made only hours, if not moments, before.

Guess what was missing? A bomb. And it's creator.

I looked around the room. Where would he go to impose his second attack? My eyes caught a piece of paper slipping out from the Bible beside his bed. It was bright yellow and laminated, not the kind of bookmark you'd use in a religious text. I stormed over to the offending paper and pulled it out of its place in between the book's pages. It was a brochure, advertising for the upcoming Peace Conference at the Hamilton Cultural Center downtown. The date and time were circled in red ink. I knew the date was today, and when I'd gotten out of the taxi three or so minutes ago, the time had been 5:09. The starting time of the convention was at 5:30. My breath caught. That's where he'd go. Of all the times, now's the time I wish the most that I had a cell phone.

As my eyes flashed back over the book, I realized that it wasn't actually the Bible. It had Arabic writing on the front, but it was definitely a religious text. I picked it up, held it with the spine facing the floor, and, knowing that if I was wrong and there was such a thing as God in any religion then I was going to hell, I tossed it up a few inches, pulled my arms away, and let it fall to the floor, where it fell open to a page with a _thunk. _The most commonly-viewed page in the book. The creases in the corners were Farid had fiddled with the paper as he read made this evident. Ta-da.

It's a little trick I learned a few years ago. It only works with thick, heavy-bound books, but it worked for this one. I kneeled, scanning over the page, finally finding what I had been subconsciously looking for. "Deceit in the service of Allah is holy," I whispered. "It's a butchered imitation of the Koran. The lying monster lied to us. He never converted."

I ran a hand through my hair, smoothing the bangs out of my face in the process. My heart hammered in my chest. More than anything at that point, I found myself wishing that I was with Booth, at the very least, because he could actually deal with this. He was certified to and trained to do things that reacted to this, and I was just a teenager from a bad home with a sorry past.

Reality check – Booth wasn't here. No one ever was when I needed someone, and now wasn't any different. Except, oh yeah, hundreds of people could die today. I crossed the room to the closet again, looking for absolutely anything that could be of further assistance.

It was tucked up on the overhead shelf of the closet, the muzzle just barely visible to me. I reached up, straining my arms and bracing myself against the wall to snatch it up, and carefully lowered it. I cocked the handgun and heard it click. It was loaded. Perfect.

I turned on the safety and hid it under my sweater, running back out of the apartment. I have a taxi to catch.

* * *

><p>FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth entered the apartment building of Farid Masruk at approximately 5:18pm, seven minutes after his partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan, had gotten a call from Hodgins explaining that they had results. Booth had recognized the name of the neighborhood the bomb originated from and drew the conclusion that Farid was their guy. He'd made a (most likely illegal) U-turn on the spot and sped to the scene.<p>

Bones was still on the phone with her colleague. "You know what, tell Hodgins to keep Holly at the lab," Booth told her as he came to the decision, recalling how Holly had jumped headfirst into saving the day not long prior.

Bones repeated the message but stopped halfway up the stairwell, looking up at Booth with an expression of nervousness and worry. "He says she already left," Bones relayed. "Hodgins told she and Zach the results of his test. Holly ran out of the Jeffersonian and caught a taxi before they could stop her. She must have made the connection."

"Then she would have gotten here before us," Booth realized, quickening his pace.

He couldn't believe that the door to Farid's apartment was wide open. He twisted the knob and encountered no resistance whatsoever. "The lock's broken," he concluded. "Someone forced entry."

Booth held his gun at the ready as he went through the rooms of the apartment. He came at last to the bedroom, and once he knew that was safe, he called his partner in after him. "Bones, you should come see this."

A sacred textbook was lying open on the floor, a bright yellow advert thrown down on the carpet next to it. Bottles of open chemicals, a vat of something melted, and wires, electrical tape, and scissors were resting haphazardly on the desktop. The closet was open and things were shoved back.

Bones knelt down to the floor and read from the book in a grave voice. "Deceit in the service of Allah is holy," she read.

Booth's brow furrowed. "That's not in the Bible. Was he still Muslim after all? Is that the Koran?"

"It's a twisted imitation," Bones explained curtly. "It justifies mass murder to its followers." She paced over to the desk, reading labels off of the bottles and peering into the small vat. "Hodgins, stay with me," she ordered into her phone. "I've got melted plastic, bottles of chlorine-"

Hodgins must have said something because Bones paused. Booth took the opportunity to look around, searching for anything incriminating and the gun that Farid Masruk was licensed. He didn't see the gun, but he did find a hole in the wall by the vent. "Insulation," he muttered. "Farid definitely killed his brother." Bones paused in her conversation, looking to him in alarm. "Hamid must have found him making the dioxin, that's when they were contaminated and why he was killed." Booth rifled for a drawer before coming up with something. "A mechanics manual to Hamid's SUV. The page on the odometer's dog-eared."

Bones picked up the brochure. "It's circled," she said hurriedly. "5:30 today, Hamilton Cultural Center Peace Conference." She set the brochure on the desk. "Hodgins, what's the dispersal rate for – say – two liters of dioxin?"

Whatever the scientist said, it must have been bad. Bones pulled a face of horror.

Booth shook his head, not finding the weapon, either. "Bones, the guy's gun is missing," he said. He pointed to the floor. "He wouldn't have left that on the floor, that's sacrilegious." The insinuation behind his words was obvious.

Bones tilted her head as she came to the same conclusion. "You think Holly was here before us." It was a statement. "So Farid's got a bomb, and Holly might have a gun. She already found where he's targeting."

"You really think she'd go after him by herself?" Booth asked, his gut tightening. The thought of his young ward hunting down a mass murderer was unsettling, especially because, from what he knew of her, if she took the gun and Farid had the bomb (which was almost certainly the case), Holly might not refrain from shooting to kill.

Bones looked around the room helplessly. "From the character traits that she displays, I find it possible that she might downplay the importance of her self-worth and therefore her own safety if others' lives are at threat. She has appeared thus far to have an overly active sense of justice."

"You're telling me," Booth muttered. "Downplay her self-worth – she did that the morning I picked her up to go to the bomb site."

"Given that, the chances that she went after Farid are… not in our favor."

* * *

><p>I entered the Hamilton Cultural Center later than I would have liked. The buses were slow and had to make stops, and the bus was closer than the taxi stop. I was doing my best to keep myself away from others. Lots of people were milling about, much of them recognizable from political broadcasts. This was the perfect target for a terrorist – that goes doubly for one who had connections to the Arab-American Friendship League. I kept my head down and made sure to keep the gun at my side from being too noticeable.<p>

The crowd was thronging around me, and even though I was tall, it was difficult to distinguish anyone from anyone else. For all I know, I've bumped into the same balding man three times. Oops, make that four. Although usually I thought, saw, and heard with more clarity, the adrenaline, thrill, and horror was clouding my mind again – although luckily it wasn't as severe as it had been at Ken Thompson's manor, because if it was, I would've been screwed.

My heart pumped rapidly. I could feel my reflexes picking up as I half-walked, half-jogged through the masses, without even feeling the wear of the repeated motions. I scanned around me every twenty seconds, looking for a glimpse of the scarred face of Farid Masruk.

The minutes passed with my heart beating like a drum in my chest. I looked around for a clock; the giant one on the wall declared in a couple minutes past the start of the convention, which meant an ideal time for the terrorist to strike was right about now.

I finally saw him, catching the smallest hint of the scars on the side of his face. I spun around, heading for him and shoving my way through. He carried a heavy black backpack and I could just barely see what looked like a joystick clutched in his hand, his thumb hovering over the explosive's trigger.

I pushed forward, shoving back at anyone who touched me on my way, when someone screeched, "_Farid!_" Farid spun around in a one-eighty, his eyes widening. I spared a quick glance up at the balcony looking down from the second level and into the lobby. Brennan was leaning over the banister, her hands cupped around her mouth to magnify the volume of her shout, and Booth had his gun drawn and cocked.

Farid swallowed, his movements slow as he reached into the bag, preparing to set off the explosion. I dove forward, forgetting about the gun tucked up by my side. I didn't have the time to take off the safety, cock, aim, and fire before the dioxin was released, so I started to tackle the terrorist.

I grasped his shoulders, jerking backwards suddenly so that he couldn't hit the button. His left shoulder made a sickening crunching noise like I'd accidentally dislocated it – not that I was about to apologize to him for breaking him. I was careful through this not to touch the backpack – I didn't know how safeguarded it was, and I didn't want to try my luck with it. I wrapped his wrists around themselves as he started to cry out, all in about three seconds. "Farid Masruk, you are-"

_BLAM._

The caterwauls of terrified people in the crowd made my ears ring as the sound of gunshot receded. I forgot to breathe for a moment as the body I'd been attacking slumped, all of the weight falling back on me. Able to take a guess, I screamed despite myself, dropping my hold on the former terrorist and backing up, raising my hands to cover my mouth in horror. Farid Masruk was dead, a bullet wound right through his heart. The blood soaked through his clothes and made a grotesque pool beneath him. Looking to my arms, they were faintly splattered with red droplets from the impact of the bullet. I shuddered, my eyes wide and horrified. What the hell had just gone down?

An agent in Homeland Security garb knelt down by the corpse, checking the bomb in the backpack. He looked up to Booth and Brennan and nodded almost imperceptibly.

My eyes locked with Booth's and I swallowed, lowering my hands and trying to control my breathing and slow down my racing heart. Booth didn't smile or wave or anything that could remotely be associated with happiness. Not like other people might have done. But he tilted his head slightly at me in question. I nodded, slowly at first, then picking up speed but stopping abruptly when I started to feel sick from the motion.

* * *

><p>The press got to me again.<p>

It was on our way out. SWAT teams took care of the corpse and the bomb squad took care of that. Homeland Security got everything calmed down, and when they got the all-clear, Booth and Brennan escorted me out into the pavilion outside the center. The paparazzi had a field day when they saw me again, and it was all I could do not to punch one of them into oblivion. Booth drove me out to his SUV by my shoulders so we made steady progress through the people crowding around.

I'd been fussed over by Angela upon arriving back at the Jeffersonian. Apparently the squints had totally freaked when they figured what my plans were. Although I appreciated the artists' concern, it was a relief to be able to escape to the Jeffersonian lawn. I sat on a bench not far from a fountain, staring into the crystal water as it splashed into the pond. I couldn't help but wonder exactly what had nearly happened to me. I'd have honestly killed Masruk if I'd had to. Booth ended up doing it for me, but that didn't change the fact that I'd have gone through with it if he hadn't.

How did something like this manage to happen to a seventeen-year-old? Sometimes I wish I knew who my real, biological parents were, because then, at least, I could have a sense of whether or not I was slumming a sort of familial reputation. Somehow, if my real parents were – I don't know, major league sports players, or social services agents, then maybe it would be worse, because they'd have been successful and I'm just barely scraping by. But if they were like me, financially challenged and without a college education, then would that really be any better? Like my life had been prophesied to be pathetic.

Now I'm being stupid. I don't like to think along lines like divination of prophesy. I don't believe in it. I don't even care about my biological parents – as a matter of fact, I like to pretend that they don't exist (however impossible that would have been). So it's easy to understand why I hate wondering about what they would think and who they are.

That was when Booth found me again.

He sat down on the bench next to me. "What're you thinking about?"

I looked away, darkly glaring at the ground. "Something stupid."

"It may not be stupid to anyone but yourself."

"Says who?" I challenged, scuffing the heel of my shoe on the cement.

"Well, our dictionaries apparently don't match up, because last I checked, 'stupid' could be defined as 'going after an unstable terrorist with a bomb.'"

"According to my dictionary, 'stupid' can be defined as 'not acting when hundreds of people are in serious danger.'" I retorted quickly.

Booth raised his hands, shaking his head. "Alright, okay. You win."

I sighed, glaring at the ground. I felt that I owed him the truth, to some extent, considering that he was taking time out of his time with his lawyer girlfriend to protect me. "I was just wondering what my biological father would be thinking," I said, scowling at the ground. I hate feeling vulnerable, and right now, I sure as hell feel that way.

Booth's expression softened. For a moment he seemed like he was debating on whether or not to give me a sideways hug, but he obviously remembered what had happened to Ladjavardi when he touched me and decided not to. Instead, he didn't meet my eyes, but he softly spoke, aware of the sensitivity of the notion. "I think he'd be proud."


	9. The Boy in the Tree, Part One

"So, who's that with Zach?" I asked, finally indulging Angela in her desire for gossip. I sidled up between Angela and Hodgins, who were standing at the railing on the platform, and leaned over the metal railing beside both of them. It was two days after Farid Masruk had been uncovered and stopped, and since then, Booth hadn't really had to work with the Jeffersonian, mostly doing paperwork in his office. Doing me a favor and forgetting about the sentimental moment a couple of days ago, he'd been dropping me off in Brennan's care to hang out with the squints. Now I was awaiting Zach to finish his conversation so that I could heed Brennan's request and bring Zach and myself out to Booth's SUV. Much to my surprise (but it was a great surprise), Brennan and Booth were inviting me to work with the Jeffersonian once again on another case.

Hodgins and Angela were both quietly watching Zach talk to a relatively short girl with brunette hair to her shoulders. They were being quiet, but I could see Zach was confused and the girl was frustrated.

"Naomi, from paleontology," Hodgins explained quietly, so Zach and "Naomi from paleontology' didn't hear us talking about them. "Naomi and Zach slept together about a month ago. Since then, she hasn't returned a single call."

"Ooh," I winced. "That's not good for anyone."

Hodgins didn't direct the question at anyone in particular, so it was open for answering. "You working on anything interesting?"

"Me?" Angela shrugged. "Yeah, yeah. A three-dimensional model of an Etruscan burial crypt." I'm not even sure what that is, but it sounds kind of cool.

"As you both know, I work at a bar on the outskirts of the ghetto, and I'm not even allowed to go to work until the murder investigation finishes." I put in. "You?"

"Yeah!" Hodgins nodded, but his smile was halfhearted and so obviously fake it didn't even count. "Oh, God, yeah! Very, very exciting stuff. Some, uh, silt profiles!"

Angela threw her head back, groaning. "God! Etruscan burial crypts are so boring!"

"Oh, man, I know!" Hodgins agreed miserably, dropping the façade of happiness. "Silt profiles. You know what we need?"

"A murder investigation?" I supplied. "Brennan and Booth are out front right now. They're waiting for me, and I'm waiting for Zach."

Hodgins and Angela both snapped around to me. "What? There's a case?" Hodgins demanded, attention caught. "Why didn't you say so?" He turned back and leaned over the railing, interrupting Zach and Naomi. "Zach!" He shouted. "You've got to go!"

Naomi said a last few words to Zach before clutching her purse tightly and turning on her high-heeled shoes, speed-walking back to her own department down the hall and a level down.

Angela sighed. "Oh, she really bolted! It doesn't look good for Zach," she observed with pity as the three of us came down the platform steps and to the grad student.

Hodgins had little sympathy for his friend. He put his arm around Zach and messed up his hair, saying, "C'mon Zach, shake it off, okay? Be a man!"

"Are you okay, honey?" Angela asked the intern sweetly with more empathy.

Zach switched the bag with his crime scene equipment to his other hand, his eyebrows furrowing as he tried to dazedly interpret Naomi's words. "She said 'take a hint,' but when I asked, 'what hint?' Naomi said that if she told me what hint, then it wouldn't be a hint anymore, it would be a statement."

Hodgins pulled Zach forcefully along with him. "You know what's good? Throwing yourself into your work!"

"You really do hate silt profiles," I said, shaking my head at the entomologist. "Where's your compassion?"

Zach frowned, casting his eyes to the tile as he walked and trusting us not to let him run into anything. "I understood the individual words, but I do not comprehend her meaning."

"Did you tell Naomi that?" Angela asked curiously.

"Yes," Zach confirmed. "She said to ask my friends, if I had any."

I rolled my eyes. Naomi seemed really rude! "Bitch," I muttered under my breath.

Angela put her hand to Zach's back and pushed him lightly through the doorway. I followed him, whistling slightly as Angela tried to hustle us away, desperate for an excuse not to keep doing the recreations of crypts. "You know, Hodgins is right!" Angela said with bright false enthusiasm. "Let's not keep Booth waiting. Somebody is decomposing as we speak!"

Hodgins fist-pumped encouragingly. "Get out there and bring us home a case, buddy!"

Although Zach was quietly mulling over his (ex-)girlfriend's words, he was keeping up with me as I hurried outside. On the staircase, I let Zach take the lead, and when he was halfway down the long steps leading up to the Jeffersonian entrance, I jumped up sideways onto the railing and spread my arms to keep a precarious balance as I slid down, whooping the whole way. I got an odd look from one of the scientists in another department, but I didn't particularly care.

I opened the door of the SUV and ushered Zach to get in. I took the crime scene equipment from him and lugged it into the trunk, obviously having more energy, and then piled in after the intern, smiling brightly mostly just for show. I was really starting to worry about paying rent this month, since I still wasn't able to return to work, but supposedly I owned the land I lived on and didn't have to pay rent, so I didn't want to raise suspicion by being obviously down in the dumps.

"We got a dead body at a prep school out in the sticks," Booth said, as soon as I started sliding the car door closed. Before I even got my seat belt to click, Booth pressed on the gas pedal and the car started moving.

"Good morning to you, too," I said sarcastically, letting the smile slip off of my face.

"Oh!" Brennan started like she'd just remembered something. "Good morning!"

Zach leaned forward in his seat, straining the seat belt around him. He looked towards Booth beseechingly. "You're successful with women, right? I mean, they like you?"

Booth shifted, obviously uncomfortable with that greeting. "Okay, look, it's a very prestigious prep school with a lot of rich kids."

Brennan also gave Booth a look, like she was scolding him. "I thought you said that it was good to start with 'good morning!'"

Zach didn't stop pushing, instead continuing with all the innocence of a kid with his hand in a cookie jar. "If a woman said to you, 'take a hint,' what would that mean?"

"Could we just concentrate on the job?" Booth barked, making it sound more like an order. I snickered; with how bossy he acts, you'd think he'd take the whole, 'being successful with women' thing as a compliment. Zach, dejected, leaned back in his seat. "Thank you," Booth sighed, relaxing. "Now, I know the sheriff out there. She's mostly okay, but the school's got a lot of pull with the county, and she's probably trying to scrape the whole case off on us. Look, what I'm trying to say is… it's not just a crime scene, but it's a political situation, too, so when we get out there, you follow my lead and you pay attention."

I scoffed. "Oh, yeah, because I care so much about politics – also known as idiots trying to get other idiots to take their favor so they can crush other idiots for their own amusement, and then **** up our country even more!" I finished with a bright tone and a sugary smile, looking directly at the rearview mirror so Booth could see.

It was quiet for a couple of minutes, as Booth didn't know how to respond to the (true to some extents) remark. Zach finally stopped fidgeting and leaned towards Booth again. "You call after every sexual encounter, right? Because that's the good thing to do."

"Oh, God," I half moaned, half laughed.

Booth twitched, his hands tightening around the steering wheel. "Look, this is a work mode. This is a work zone. Do not talk sex at work."

"Do not talk sex at all around me, please," I interjected.

Brennan shook her head in frustration, tossing her hands slightly. "First, you tell me I'm too task-oriented! Then, when I say 'good morning,' you say that I should concentrate on the job!"

Booth tensed at the barrage of unwelcome arguments coming at him, his jugular becoming more defined. "Alright, look! We've got about a forty-five minute drive. What do you say we pass it in quiet meditation?"

_Five Minutes Later…_

I sighed loudly, interrupting the contemplating silence of the SUV. Zach's attention was torn from his shoes and Brennan looked up slightly at the noise. "Okay, Booth," I said in distress. "I tried. I really, really, tried, but I cannot just sit in silence unless I'm depressed and being particularly self-loathing."

"It's been five minutes!" Booth protested, dismayed that I was opening the field to conversation again.

"And it's been five minutes of mental hell for me!" I retorted. "Would you like to be me and be left to my thoughts?"

Booth thought about this for a moment before admitting, "Judging from what reckless stunts you've pulled? Probably not…"

"Then please turn on the radio or something!"

"No. We are going to be quiet for the next forty minutes!"

_Ten Minutes Later…_

I hummed loudly and obnoxiously to the song that was currently stuck in my head. I thought the lyrics in my head while I hummed the tune, desperately trying to occupy myself and irritate Booth into giving in at the same time.

_Hey, I just met you! And this is crazy! But here's my number, so call me maybe!_

Booth's hand suddenly shot out towards the radio. He turned a few knobs. "Alright!" He yelled, thoroughly aggravated. "You win!"

"Thank you!" I said, satisfied.

_Fifteen Minutes Later…_

I sang along to the song blaring through the speakers. I don't think Zach or Brennan knew the lyrics, so they weren't singing, and Booth was kind of having a rough day, so he wasn't joining in the fun. "_THERE AIN'T NO LOAD THAT I CAN'T HOLD! THE ROADS ARE ROUGH, THIS IS KNOW! I'LL BE THERE WHEN THE LIGHT COMES IN! TELL 'EM WE'RE SURVIVORS! LIFE IS A HIGHWAY! I WANNA RIDE IT ALL NIGHT LONG! IF YOU'RE GOIN' MY WAY, I WANNA DRIVE IT ALL NIGHT LONG!"_

_Fifteen Minutes Later…_

Booth hit the button to turn off the stereo. "We're here," he said, his voice sounding horribly relieved. "Thank God," he added, closing his eyes for a second as he slowed down the automobile and drove through the school's wrought-iron gates.

"Can I talk now?" Zach beseeched wearily.

"No!" Booth sharply determined.

"That's not fair!" Brennan exclaimed, turning around slightly to Zach. "Okay, we're here now."

"My car, my rules!" Booth argued. "Period!"

"Our mouths, our decisions!" I retorted as the car drew up alongside the well-dressed security guards who definitely had guns at their sides.

Booth held up his badge at the officers before smoothly saying, "FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth and a forensic anthropologist."

Brennan leaned forward so that she could be seen around the cocky federal agent. "Dr. Temperance Brennan, from the Jeffersonian Institute," she introduced formally. She pulled her ID card from the Jeffersonian up from the lanyard around her neck and held it out so the security guards could compare the digital image to her person.

Zach strained against the seatbelt to lean forward and into side of the rolled-down driver's window. "Plus one crack assistant."

I joined Zach in the uncomfortable position, smirking. "And one badass consultant."

"I'll need to see some ID, please," the guard said gruffly, obviously talking to Zach and I.

As Booth passed Zach's identification card to the guard, he spoke about me quickly in justification. "She's a federal ward. She's clear."

"This doesn't remind me of where I went to school," Zach noted, looking up through his window at the large manor. Done in fancy red bricking, the school was a collection of buildings, with dorms built in opposing towers for the males and females. The school was enormous and probably had millions put into its construction.

"Yeah, people here don't get much further from the real world," I nodded to Zach. "I hear that the kids here are actually classified because they go here for protection. Their parents are important politicians or other people vital to society in varying countries."

The guard passed Brennan and Zach's ID cards back to Booth, who passed them to Brennan, who kept hers and passed Zach his. "Agent Booth, Dr. Brennan, I'll lead you to Mr. Sanders, our head of security."

Booth smiled politely. "If you could just aim us in the right direction, we'll find it."

The guard didn't even change his expression. If possible, his face became even harder. "All outsiders are to be escorted, sir."

"See what I mean?" I murmured to Zach. "They're so obsessed with security that they only trust themselves, not even the federal government." Zach tilted his head slightly towards me to show he was listening. "Which is stupid, really. The feds have all of these background checks and they can pull files whenever, but this private organization here could be infiltrated over time."

The guard walked off to get another person as an escort for us. Booth looked around the property, bored, and trying to find something to catch his attention in the meantime. His eyes settled on a silver slab of stone mounted onto a pedestal with Latin writing scrawled across in italics. "Omnia Mea Mecum Porto," Booth read aloud. He scoffed. "What's that mean, huh? 'Regular people stay out?'"

Brennan, Zach, and I all gave Booth incredulous looks as we said in complete synchrony, "I carry with me all my things."

Booth just turned and gave us a really weird stare until finally a little jeep cruiser pulled up in front and honked. Booth shrugged his shoulders and brushed it off, slowly creeping along behind the sluggish jeep. The cruiser went into the woods, down a small pathway. A couple of blocks out from the school, I couldn't even see the intimidating towers anymore. My view of the near-castle was obscured by the enormous pine trees.

The jeep stopped suddenly and a woman got out. She had dark, wavy hair that was tied up in a messy ponytail at the nape of her neck. She had fairly low cheekbones and a healthy red tint to her cheeks. She wore beige pants and a police ranger jacket, the sheriff's six-point star emblem fastened to the front. Her radio clip fastened at her waist, where she had an equipment belt that was home to her pistol and her walkie-talkie. The police can call it whatever they want, it's an enhanced children's toy, plain and simple. "Hey Seeley," she greeted with a slight twang from the suburban county. "How's it going?"

Hanover Preparatory School's headmaster and the officer in charge of security filed out of the car after the sheriff. Booth slammed his car door behind him as he got out, and the resounding noise echoed in the forest surroundings. Brennan paced up to his side confidently while I waited for Zach to get out, holding the door open, and then opening the trunk for him to get his equipment bag.

Booth apparently knew the sheriff, because he greeted her on a first-name basis. "Karen, congratulations on being elected full sheriff. Very impressive."

"Agent Booth," the second man said in a gruff voice. I could tell just by listening that it wasn't his natural tone – he was trying to sound like a bass. It didn't suit him well and sorta just made him look like an idiot. "I'm Leo Sanders, head of security at Hanover Prep. This is Headmaster Peter Ronson."

"Where are the human remains?" Brennan dived straight into the reasons for being here without stopping for chitchat.

Booth covered up his mild annoyance at her with a smile. He motioned to her, and then to Zach and I as we came up beside Brennan. "My federal ward, Holly Kirkland, and Dr. Temperance Brennan and her assistant Jack, uh, something."

I gave Booth a look of disgust, shaking my head. How could he work with someone for more than a week, and have known him beforehand, and still not even know his name? That's just… sad. "Zach Addy," Zach corrected, perturbed.

Brennan tapped her foot, not wanting to wait any longer to go through the social catch-up games. "Could you show me to the remains?" She asked again.

The sheriff started to lead the way through the underbrush, leaving the cars in the clearing as we passed into what could have been a little picnic area. It even had a bench built under the midmorning shade. "I don't know if you remember me, but we worked together on a case. A bunch of bones found in a culvert about a year ago?" The sheriff asked Brennan conversationally.

"I remember the bones in the culvert," Brennan assured her.

I face palmed. "Dr. Brennan, that wasn't the question…"

Booth sped up slightly and whispered to Brennan, irritation very obvious. "You know Bones, being nice to the locals by remembering their names and such wouldn't hurt."

The headmaster inclined his chin, demanding attention as he cleared his throat. Zach, Brennan, and I were the only people who didn't look to him. If someone wants my attention and I haven't deemed them worth bothering myself for, then they can address me instead of acting pompously. He's not the King of France… although I doubt I would care much if the King of France were being rude, either, I'd still probably disrespect him blatantly, and then possibly be executed. Uh… yeah. "Our two week term break ends tomorrow. I'd like to get this tidied up so the students never know what happened."

"It's amazing how you assume your students are all morons," I commented. "I mean, I _hope _they know how to operate a computer or read a newspaper. FBI vans and local police swarming an elite prep school? No media coverage whatsoever? Ha! Don't make me laugh. I would also hope that they notice if one of their peers suddenly disappears with no explanation."

"We don't know what happened yet," Brennan stayed more on topic than I was. "But that's why we're here. Did anyone touch the body?"

The sheriff shook her head. "I doubt it. It's pretty grisly."

"Not big on small talk, is she?" Sanders muttered to Booth just loud enough for me to overhear.

"Dr. Brennan is very focused."

Brennan looked around before looking back to the sheriff, shaking her head in disdain. "Where are the remains?"

Booth looked around curiously before his eyes traveled upwards in exasperation. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, slightly comical. He pointed up to a tree behind me. I turned back around and saw the corpse, dangling from what I guess is a crudely-made noose. "Is that a student?" Booth asked while I pointed out the cadaver to Brennan and Zach.

"It's a secure campus. It's got to be a student, staff, or faculty," Sanders said without pause. He sure is confident, isn't he?

Brennan stretched out a pair of light blue latex gloves, blowing air into them to loosen them before trying to stretch them around her hands and up to her wrists. "Zach, video first. I don't want your flash disturbing the crows."

Sanders puffed. "Yeah, that would be a shame. Disturb the human flesh-eating birds."

I rounded on the security officer, getting pissed off at him. "Yeah, it would, wouldn't it? Considering that, if it was foul play, then the 'human flesh-eating birds' could contain or be indicative to key evidence proving homicide or murder accessory. But, then again, who cares if someone was murdered, just so long as you get paid for doing your job and protecting the staff and students, even though you obviously didn't do so well." I glared. Being a smartass was something I'd always been good at and always will be good at.

"Do you want to increase the perimeter here?" Booth rushed to change the subject before a dispute could begin. "Gentlemen, give my forensic anthropologists some room."

Zach didn't look away as he started to record the crime scene on his CSI camera. "Your forensic anthropologists?" He repeated skeptically.

The sheriff motioned for the other officers present to do as asked before starting, "Agent Booth, if you decide that this becomes a suicide, it becomes my problem, correct?"

I growled lowly. "Actually, the nature of the death is up to us, the people actually finding out what happened instead of just standing around and waving badges, to determine."

The sheriff staggered backwards, taken aback by the show of hostility. "Let's give the bone people some room," she called, extending the perimeters.

Booth strolled up, rolling his eyes at me. "You know, I'm glad we had that little chat about being nice to the locals."

"I believe I made myself perfectly clear that I don't give a damn about the locals," I stated bluntly.

"I don't like sheriffs," Brennan denied. "They are elected into office, which means their goal is being re-elected, not finding the truth."

"I got the video, Dr. Brennan," Zach interrupted.

"Go to stills."

The headmaster approached, his expression grim and slightly queasy. "Can we just get him down from there?" He asked, clearly unnerved by the dangling corpse.

"There's a lot of work to do before we get to that," Brennan explained semi-patiently.

"You want to step back, please, sir?" Booth asked, holding out his arm and taking a step back, trying to peacefully coerce the man into doing as asked.

The headmaster took it as an insult. "I'm the headmaster here!"

I snapped around once more and started cracking my knuckles threateningly. "And this is a crime scene. Now unless you want to miraculously learn forensic science in about five minutes or less and then conclude COD, and if it was murder, the motive, weapon, and perpetrator, I suggest you take a step back and stop breathing down our necks. You called us here to do a job, so stop hindering our progress and maybe we'll actually be able to get it done!" I shouted.

A slight cracking noise startled me and I looked back to the tree. The dangling corpse remained in place, but a few ravens flew off, squawking. The head, slowly at first, started slipping, before rolling and falling down through the branches and into Brennan's reaching grasp. I blinked, not entirely sure how to react to that. Brennan didn't even make a face. "We're going to need an evidence bag," she declared.

Booth, who was still watching the corpse, flinched. "Heads up!"

Without the head to keep it in place via pressure on the noose, the body began to fall through the branches before landing on the ground with a sickening plop, several pines drifting down to the ground on top of it. I blinked again before calling to the CSI team, "I think we're going to need a larger bag."

* * *

><p>"I make this a male, approximately five foot six, one hundred thirty pounds. From the looks of his sternum and skull, I would say mid-adolescence, say fourteen to seventeen… high cheek bones – You think maybe Asian?" Brennan stopped in her slow walk down the length of the exam table, looking up to Angela for a sign of agreement or contradiction.<p>

Angela rocked her head. "I'm getting more of a Hispanic vibe."

"There is a significant crematogaster ant colony in the tree that fed on the body, as well as tabanid maggots. I'll give you a time of death estimate when I figure who ate what when," the resident bug and slime analyst declared.

"I love being around you people when I'm starting to get hungry," I shared sarcastically. "Whenever I start craving food, the appetite goes away and I don't have to worry about it anymore." Luckily for me, the Medico-Legal team didn't usually take lunch until a couple more hours from now.

"Check for insect pupa and larvae; see what kind of medications and/or drugs might have been in his system," Brennan ordered Hodgins.

Zach held up a pendant on a skinny necklace. "He was wearing this."

Angela looked at the pendant and sighed sadly. "Catholic boy."

"One by two forceps," Brennan continued, spotting something. She grabbed a surgical instrument from the table and nudged a disc-shaped, small item from behind the corpse's ear curiously.

"Oh my God," Angela gagged. "What is that?"

"Cochlear implant," I said, recognizing the design. "The birds sure weren't going to be very happy with their treasure. It's not edible."

Angela hit her sketchpad against her thighs, waiting for an assignment and something to do with her hands. "That would set a boy apart from the others – being deaf."

Brennan set the implant on a little metal tray and handed it over to Zach. "Get a serial number."

"I'll get x-rays and 3D imaging of the entire skeleton," Angela asserted.

Zach didn't immediately do as he was told, instead hovering for a moment. "I didn't talk to anyone in high school, but I didn't kill myself."

Hodgins laughed derisively. "That wasn't a high school. It was an experimental Eugenics program!"

* * *

><p>I scowled, crossing my arms across my chest and leering down at the headmaster, who sat behind his desk collectedly. "How hard can it be to find out which one of your students is missing?" I demanded coldly.<p>

"We can't just call parents and say, 'we found a rotting body. Do you know where your child is?'" Sanders returned the leering glare full-force, but there was no way he was going to out-bitch me.

"Why not?" I threw my arms up. "Seems to me like it'd be pretty effective!"

"We can do a full role call tomorrow," the headmaster said assertively. "All of our higher-risk students are accounted for."

I huffed. "Oh, well, that's okay then! Why don't Agent Booth and I just go to the mall arcade to pass the time until lunch? I mean, as long as the _high-risk students _are accounted for!"

"What are our options?" The headmaster asked me, clearly less interested in a bitch war than the head of Hanover Prep security. "Vis-à-vis, publicity, media?"

"That's really not my problem, and if that's what you're worried about, then you need to get your priorities straight, man," I corrected, nodding slowly.

Sanders shifted his weight to his other leg. "There are students here we really don't want the whole world to know about."

"It's obviously a suicide!" The headmaster laughed as though a homicide scenario was preposterous. "It's not as if we're asking you to forgo the glory of catching a murderer!"

"Reality check," I sneered. "Dr. Brennan, Mr. Addy, and I are the ones that decide whether or not it was a suicide, and right now you're not getting any cover-up favors from me!" The phone on the headmaster's desk started to ring and the headmaster looked from me to the phone, a very pointed message for me to leave. "Go ahead. Answer the call. I've got time to kill."

The headmaster picked up the phone warily, eyeing me nervously as I arched my eyebrows at the overly-cynical behavior. "Hanover Academy's headmaster speaking." He nodded after a moment and extended the phone to me. "It's your…" he paused for a moment before saying, "Colleague."

I took the phone, flopping down in a chair opposite the headmaster and twisting the wire of the telephone around my finger. "Holly Kirkland," I said boredly.

"_We'll have the identity of the boy in the tree within an hour,"_ Brennan replied, sounding slightly excited.

"That was fast," I noted. "So identification is possible through the serial number?"

"_That's correct, but the interesting thing is that…"_

"Ah," I interrupted, nodding, taking the opportunity to mess with the heads of the headmaster and Sanders. "You can fill me in later."

Brennan protested. "_No, but the interesting thing is that it's-"_

"That is correct," I said, nodding wisely and pretending that I was being asked something.

"_What?"_

"That is interesting!" I exclaimed.

Brennan paused. I heard her puff, exasperated. "_Are you drunk or something?"_

"We'll catch up later," I reassured her. "Thanks for calling. You, Booth, and I can all go grab some Chinese food and you can fill me in on all of the details." Without waiting for a response, I clicked down on the end call button on the receiver, setting the telephone back into position.

Sanders' lips pursed. "A death is very upsetting to a community as tight as ours."

"Right," I said with a false smile, nodding understandingly. "Famous for keeping your students safe, but then, you can't be held responsible if a tragically troubled student decides to kill himself."

"We all agree that suicide is the only feasible conclusion," Sanders pushed further.

"See, that's all good for you and your little gambling pool," I said, getting back into the bitch war. "But, oh, wait… that's not actually your decision to make!" I stood up from the chair, clapping my hands together. I'd have to say, my first questioning without Booth went pretty smoothly. "But in the meantime, I'm glad we understand each other. I'll need a complete enrollment list including teachers, staff, students, and excess faculty. And don't forget security," I added, clicking my tongue.

Sanders smiled condescendingly like I was a funny joke to laugh at. "That's extremely confidential information."

"Luckily for you, I'm good at keeping secrets."


	10. The Boy in the Tree, Part Two

**Later, at the lab, I was impressing Hodgins with my story of how I'd totally won a bitch fit with the head of Hanover security when Brennan and Booth came to the platform, arguing. "What do you mean it's not a suicide?" Booth demanded fiercely, stepping up the platform first. "What is that?" He looked around as the sudden sound started.**

**The light on the control panel flashed as a high-pitched alarm started to beep. Brennan swiped her ID card before letting it fall back down her lab coat on the lanyard. "We can't just let anyone step into the forensics area and contaminate all the ****_boring details_****," Brennan hissed angrily.**

**I flinched. "Oh, Booth. What did you do this time?" It was becoming common knowledge that the FBI agent and the anthropologist had many disagreements.**

** "****The boring details?" Booth repeated, incredulous. "'The boring details' was my signal for you to stop talking, okay?!" It clicked; after calling me, when I was talking to the headmaster and security officer, Brennan must have called Booth while he was talking to the local authority. And then Booth… well. He offended her by calling the details of her discoveries boring. Booth looked back to the control panel before stating sharply, "I want my own card!"**

** "****Well, I want my own gun," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "But that's not going to happen anytime soon, is it?" I knew Booth was mad at Brennan, and not me, actually, he wasn't really mad, he was just trying to suck up to her. Brennan was mad at Booth and the argument was between them, but Booth had to put up with me and Brennan was, like, my favorite person in the world, so I took it upon myself to attempt to diffuse tension between them.**

**Booth shot me a thankful look for taking the focus off of his rude comment, but now had to turn and argue with me, so he kept his voice from showing relief. "Last time you had a gun, you shot someone!"**

** "****He was a bad guy," Zach pointed out faithfully. I smiled at him in thanks for the defense.**

** "****Actually," I corrected Booth, "Last time I had a gun, I never shot anyone. Last time I had a gun, I was chasing a terrorist, who, may I remind you, you shot. In fact, you almost shot me! You know, that was really rude of you! I have more of a right to say to you that you shouldn't have a gun!"**

**Booth tried to change the topic, but he was quite obvious about it. "Okay, look, who's our victim?"**

** "****All the boring details?" Brennan clarified stingily.**

** "****Let it go, Bones! Move on!"**

**Brennan's muscles seized in her sudden onslaught of further anger. She reached out to stop Booth from touching the exam table that the victim was on, her fingers visibly tighter than necessary on his arm. "****_Don't _****call me Bones!"**

**Hodgins and I shared a look of pity for the former sniper and Hodgins interrupted the dispute. "We traced the cochlear implant to Dr. Maurice Ledbetter at Cedars Sinai, who placed it in a boy named Nester Olivos."**

**I nodded needlessly in agreement. "Nester Olivos has – well, ****_had_**** – ****a student visa, was the only son of a Venezuelan ambassador. Need anything else right now?" I tilted my head subtly to the head of the exam table, where the hyoid was placed between the mandible and sternum. The snapped bone laid innocently, not drawing any attention to it unless it was pointed out. Booth, however, didn't catch the motion.**

** "****Do you want all the boring details?" Brennan asked Booth, refusing to look up at him.**

**Booth looked at an x-ray over Brennan's shoulder. "Let it go, Bones…"**

**Brennan lifted the x-ray up and turned herself at an angle so Booth couldn't see it. "Don't call me Bones! The boy's hyoid bone is broken."**

**Booth rocked his head from side to side as if to say this didn't mean anything to him. "Strangulation death. The hyoid bone is always broken."**

** "****Where did you get your forensics education?" I scoffed.**

** "****In adults," Zach corrected Booth. "This was an adolescent."**

** "****Adolescents' hyoids are flexible, unbreakable," Brennan informed Booth shortly.**

**Booth sighed at being wrong once again. I'm sensing a pattern here. "Well, maybe the kid's got some kind of Venezuelan brittle bone syndrome." I closed my eyes and let my head drop. Zach exhaled tensely, which I was beginning to realize was one of the few cues he had that showed he was irritated. Booth quickly backtracked. "I'm just trying to help! So you're saying he was murdered?"**

** "****No," Brennan quickly edited. "I'm saying I don't know what happened to the boy, because I don't have all the facts!"**

* * *

><p><strong>The prep school had brought their frustrations to the FBI, which had decided to call a meeting to officially end the argument over whether or not Booth had continued jurisdiction over the case – it depended on whether or not Brennan ruled it a suicide or homicide case. Present were myself (duh), Brennan, Booth, the burly agent that was rude to Booth during the Masruk case (Agent Santana), and a middle-aged African American man named Dr. Goodman. Dr. Goodman, like Booth, took pride in deportment, and wore an expensive dark business suit. His hair was short and neatly cropped, and he handled himself very professionally. Dr. Goodman had, at first, seemed skeptical at meeting me, but when Brennan confirmed my identity, he was pretty cool with me being there when he recognized me as Brennan's assistant who he had, apparently, been getting good reviews about from the latter.<strong>

** "****How hard can it be?" Santana was asking rudely, his demeanor a classic 'I'm better than you' attitude. "A kid hanging from a tree. Obviously, it's a suicide!"**

** "****Dude, you are seriously stunning me with your single-minded stupidity," I said to him bluntly. "Have you ever heard of murder? Or staging? Maybe you should Google those terms."**

**Santana's eyes narrowed at me, but Booth stopped him before he could verbally assault me. "Sir, has Hanover Prep been stirring the pudding on this?" What a weird expression.**

** "****Of course they are stirring the pudding!" Santana snorted. "Every mover and shaker in this town is connected to that damn school! Apparently the very future of this country is at stake!"**

**Booth twitched. "Well, I would like to declare it a murder, just to shake those little bast-"**

** "****I'm not going to declare it a murder so you can 'shake things up!'" Brennan interrupted heatedly. Santana sighed obnoxiously, his contempt not being hidden even subtly.**

** "****The evidence is ambiguous at best," Dr. Goodman said, his tone mild. Either he wasn't sensing the tension in the room or, and this was more likely, he didn't care about Santana's petty attitude.**

** "****Well un-ambiguize it!" Santana snapped. "Please, Dr. Goodman."**

** "****Un-ambiguize isn't a word, smartass," I said, rolling my eyes.**

**Santana shot me a glare and I smirked at him. I was a minor, a federal ward, and he wasn't at all in charge of me, so I could irritate him all I wanted and he couldn't rebuke me. He tensely tore his gaze away from me and to Brennan. "Look, you're very experienced within your field with bones and such, right? Doesn't your gut say suicide?"**

**Brennan cast her eyes down to the large oval table, not wishing to start a conflict. "I… don't actually use my gut for that, sir."**

**Booth didn't smile, but his expression didn't exactly stay neutral either. "She really, really doesn't."**

**Dr. Goodman folded his hands in his lap. "Like all of us at the Jeffersonian, Dr. Brennan prefers science to the digestive tract."**

** "****What about your gut?" Santana changed his focus to Booth.**

**Booth put on a 'tough guy' voice as he leaned back. "My gut says it stinks."**

**Dr. Goodman leaned forward slightly. "If he smells with his gut, what does he use his nose for?" He murmured to Brennan and I. Brennan laughed quietly and I snickered, quickly stifling the sound.**

**Santana gave up with the idea of intimidation. Defeated, he slumped back in his chair, the front wheel lifting up slightly from the floor. "Alright, alright. In order for an investigation to occur, you, Dr. Brennan, have to declare it a murder."**

**Dr. Goodman smiled slightly, amused. He folded his hands in his lap. He seemed good at keeping the peace. "Without an investigation we can't find out if it's murder, but there will be no investigation unless Dr. Brennan declares it to be a murder." He cocked his head at me slightly. "Shall I send for a philosopher?"**

**I snorted. "I think that would confuse the FBI even further. In my time with them I'm learning that they're more brawn than brains." Dr. Goodman chuckled at my joke, even though it was half serious. He wasn't offended because he worked in alliance with the FBI, but he was an employee of the Jeffersonian Institution.**

**Brennan drew a breath and looked from the table to Dr. Goodman. "They're saying it's my call."**

**Santana looked to Booth triumphantly, arrogantly crossing his arms. "You see? It's how you talk to these people."**

**I glared. "It's also how you talk about them in front of their faces like they're idiots that makes them punch you in the face."**

** "****Are you threatening me?" Santana leered.**

**I shrugged, unconcerned. "That depends on how you interpret the fact."**

**Brennan took the pause in Santana's response to make her decision. "My official finding is that Nester Olivos…" she paused and looked to me as if in confirmation. Warmed as I was that she trusted me enough for my input, this was her decision. Although it could be suicide, it could also be homicide, and the murderer would go free if Brennan declared it suicide, because an investigation wouldn't be opened and the case would be closed. Personally, I think it should be declared murder so that we could investigate. Even if we were wrong, and there was no murderer, at least we'd know that for sure. I gave Brennan a skeptical expression, attempting to convey my thoughts. Brennan nodded at me almost indiscernibly as she finished; I don't think anyone really noticed. "…Is a victim of a homicide."**

* * *

><p><strong> "<strong>**Thank you."**

**Brennan turned her head to look at Booth from the passenger's side of the SUV, confused. "For what?"**

** "****For going with my instincts in there," he said gratefully.**

**Brennan scoffed. "I did not back up your instincts. I bought time to find the facts I need to tell me what happened to Nester Olivos. What's with you and the private school?"**

**Booth sighed. "I thought we understood each other."**

** "****That it's bad?" I guessed.**

** "****I don't…" Booth tried again to convey his meaning without seeming too extreme in his opinions. "I don't like people who think they're better than other people."**

** "****Some people are better than other people," Brennan said matter-of-factly.**

**Booth groaned, tossing his head in irritation before gluing his eyes back to the road and shaking his head in disapproval. "You know, what you said right there, that is so un-American! 'All men are created equal'; either you believe that or you don't."**

** "****Some people are smarter than others!" Brennan argued. "There's no use being offended by the fact!" She stopped, looking down to her hands in her lap for a moment. "What are we going to tell Nester's parents?" She asked, changing the subject entirely. Her voice was considerably softer than it had been.**

**Booth's voice softened, seeming to get that Brennan was genuinely sad about the boy's death. "We tell them that their son was found dead, we're looking into it. Sorry for your loss… and we are," he added as an afterthought.**

** "****What?" I asked, not sure why he'd added the obvious.**

** "****Sorry for their loss!" Booth repeated firmly. "It's ****_sad!_****Try to remember that."**

** "****We're not sociopaths!" Brennan exclaimed, insulted.**

** "****You're bad with people, okay?" Booth took one hand off of the steering wheel to motion to Brennan carelessly. "No use being offended by the fact." Brennan frowned slightly as the agent threw her words back in her face.**

* * *

><p><strong>The International Affairs Embassy had really tight security. Booth had to get a court order to get in, and then he had to have his gun taken away by security until the point when we'd leave. They had to scan his badge and Brennan's ID, and they had to run a search on me to make sure I wasn't concealing weapons before they let Booth keep me with him. Then that's not to forget all the security in black suits everywhere. It took like an hour for us to go from the lobby to get escorted up to the Venezuelan ambassador's office.<strong>

** "****Hanging from a tree at the school?" Ambassador Olivos repeated with a look of growing horror spreading across her face. She had the traces of South American heritage, although I wouldn't have identified her as specifically Venezuelan if I didn't already know that for a fact. Her dark brown hair was naturally curly, and the natural ringlets made the tight bun look interesting. Her eyes were dark brown and her skin almost bronzed. She wore a black pencil skirt and a business-y black blouse. Her husband and Nester Olivos' father was off to the side. He wasn't very different from his wife in looks, aside from the slacks and necktie, and his hair was lighter and much shorter.**

** "****I'm afraid so, Ambassador Olivos," Booth said, keeping his voice low and humble in respect for the foreign administrator. "We will provide you with full details when Dr. Brennan finishes her investigation."**

** "****Will you need us to identify Nester's remains?" Mr. Olivos asked, his eyes wet with unshed tears.**

** "****That won't be necessary," I interjected. There was no need to let them see their son as he was; it would only add fuel to the inevitable nightmares. I took a few slow paces to the ambassador's desk, not wanting to alarm security as I closed my fist around the necklace in my jacket pocket and pulling it out. I tilted my hand slightly, grasping the necklace chain as the pendant fell towards the desk with gravity, straightening itself out and showing the Catholic seal. "We recovered this from Nester's person," I said, bowing my head. "I asked our entomologist to scan for particulates prematurely so I could return this."**

**The ambassador took the necklace from me with shaking hands. "Thank you," she said, looking up at me tearfully from her seat. I nodded in acknowledgement before stepping backwards to Booth and Brennan's sides again.**

** "****When was the last time you heard from Nester?" Booth asked, beginning to go through the regular motions of questioning.**

** "****A few days after his holiday began," Mr. Olivos answered while the ambassador carefully replaced her late son's necklace in her purse. "He went with a friend to Nova Scotia."**

** "****We received an email," the ambassador added to clarify.**

** "****Could we have a copy?" Booth asked politely.**

** "****It will help us determine exactly when the victim died," Brennan said in an effort to be considerate and explain. Booth elbowed her slightly, discreetly, and she glared at Booth for a moment before correcting herself. "Your son. We're very sorry for your loss."**

** "****There was nothing to suggest in any email that Nester was unhappy," Mr. Olivos told us, looking between the three of us unsurely, like he didn't know who to address.**

**I shrugged slightly. "With all due respect, Mr. Olivos, I'd like a copy of that email and others forms of written communication that your son composed. Although it seems unlikely, it is still a possibility that the email you received is forged, and it is our responsibility to investigate any possible leads. By comparing the speech pattern and writing styles of two different literature compositions, one written for sure by Nester, we can make an informed decision on whether or not the email you received is legitimate."**

**Mr. Olivos looked at me for a moment, surprised, but then nodded in acceptance. "Of course, miss. Anything you need."**

** "****We would like to take him home," the ambassador stated firmly and suddenly. I switched my (hopefully gentle, but probably cool) gaze to Nester Olivos's mother. "We must petition the church to bury him in consecrated ground."**

**Mr. Olivos looked to his wife. "Nester was an altar boy. They will bury him properly," he assured her, before looking to Booth, a grim expression set on his face. "When will you release him to us?"**

**Booth put his hands in his jacket pockets, trying to subtly avoid eye contact with the grieving parents. "It's up to Dr. Brennan," he said instead.**

* * *

><p><strong>I waited while Hodgins hurried over to the platform edge to scan his card so I could join he and Zach. "Thanks for releasing the religious necklace," I said to Hodgins quickly. Sentiments weren't really my thing, but I felt like, since Hodgins humored my request when I don't have a place in his lab, I owed him a notion of gratitude. "Ambassador Olivos was glad to have recovered it."<strong>

** "****No problem, kid," Hodgins said, going back to his microscope. Although usually I'd find it offensive if someone called me a kid all the time, it didn't seem like Hodgins ever intended it to be rude, and the way he said it was cheerful, so I wasn't about to get myself riled up over nothing.**

** "****What did Naomi mean when she said, 'take a hint?'" Zach asked suddenly, looking up from the suture he'd been examining. He seemed frustrated and unable to focus, grinding his teeth almost unnoticeably.**

** "****Ooh," Hodgins voiced his thoughts unhelpfully.**

** "****What did I do wrong?" Zach continued doggedly.**

** "****It's not what you did wrong. It's what you didn't do," Hodgins said with a slight look of bemusement, but he made sure Zach couldn't see.**

**Zach blinked, earnestly confused about his (ex) girlfriend's words. "Where do you learn this stuff?"**

**I snorted. "Not the ****_Kama Sutra_****, that's for sure."**

** "****There are some things you learn by doing," Hodgins said smartly, sounding self-confident and smug. "Riding a bike, driving a car… pleasing a woman," he added with a slight smirk.**

**Zach's eyebrows furrowed as he considered this. "I can't ride a bike or drive a car."**

**I started to laugh, but didn't want to offend the Jeffersonian team, so I bit down lightly on my fist. ****_Or, apparently, please a woman,_****I thought.**

** "****Or, apparently, please a woman," Hodgins said bluntly.**

**I blinked. That… was a little weird…**

**Zach moved from the side of the exam table and to his friend's side, trying to get him to pay full attention to him and not the particulates he was running through on Petri dishes. "I need specific instructions, a list of techniques to implement, or a sequence of 'moves,'" he pushed.**

**I clenched my jaw, pretty sure blood was going to my cheeks. I really didn't need to hear this. "I'm really not the guy to talk to about that," Hodgins said with a grimace, apparently sharing my opinion.**

** "****Why not?" Zach demanded, but his tone still lacked anger like most peoples' would have had. "You've slept with, like, ten thousand women."**

**I groaned, covering my face with my hand.**

**Hodgins sighed roughly, not seeing any choice but to continue to write off the intern. "Because our relationship is all about what's up here," he emphasized, motioning to his head. "What you need to do is talk to someone more earthy." He made a semi-gesture to his pants.**

** "****That's it. Boring questioning or not, I'm joining Booth in Brennan's office," I announced.**

* * *

><p><strong> "<strong>**As a school psychiatrist, I'm bound by patient confidentiality." The female doctor was across from Booth, seated nervously in the chair across from Brennan's desk while Booth appeared to have taken Brennan's seat from her. Sanders, Hanover Prep's headmaster, Brennan, and I were standing at various points around the room, although the Hanover employees didn't particularly want me to be there. The woman's shoes tapped slightly, uncomfortable in the aggressive level of dominances competing between Booth, Sanders, the headmaster, and, yes, myself. Her nylons flexed as she crossed her legs. "In the absence of a warrant or permission from his parents, I can't divulge the specifics of my meetings with Nester Olivos. I can tell you that he was at extreme risk of suicide."**

** "****There are no indications that Nester was taking antidepressants," Brennan challenged mildly. Despite the argumentative words, her tone didn't exude the attempted intimidation or retorting attitude that had been so well-worked into Booth's or mine.**

** "****I can only make recommendations to the parents," the psychiatrist declared, swallowing nervously as Brennan looked over at me for confirmation. I nodded; that was true. A doctor can prescribe away, but it's up to the legal guardians whether or not the minor actually ingested the medications.**

** "****And you think this boy was depressed enough to hang himself from a tree?" I asked, raising my eyebrows and injecting myself back into the questioning. "During the middle of a supposed leisure vacation when he could have been chilling with his homies in Nova Scotia?" Yeah, I said that. I'm seventeen, I'm entitled to being unprofessional once in a while.**

** "****I'm not even sure why you're talking," Sanders told me with a sneer. He added to the psychiatrist, "You don't have to answer to her."**

** "****Hey, guess what, dude?" I said, cracking my knuckles threateningly. "You'd better reconfigure your attitude, or I'll reconfigure your face!" While I never use the same threat twice on the same person, I do like the way that that particular threat sounds, so I say it fairly often when I'm in the mood for a mental laugh.**

** "****Answer her question," Booth ordered the psychiatrist before Sanders and I could engage in another bitch-war.**

**The psychiatrist nervously raised her hands as if to shield herself. Jesus, I mean, I know she's not very at home here, but she doesn't have to act like we're going to hit her. I know only too well how horrible it is to be on the receiving side of that sort of treatment. "He was alienated by language, by his handicap, by his own social awkwardness – yes."**

** "****Thank you for coming down, Dr. Petty," the headmaster dismissed carelessly. The psychiatrist stood up, collected her bag from beside the chair, and hurried out the door, taking off like a bat out of hell as soon as she was past the threshold. It's fitting that her surname is Petty when she has to put up with adolescents' petty issues, isn't it? "As we suspected, suicide. A depressed and lonely boy hangs himself over the holiday."**

** "****How is it that the son of a foreign ambassador goes missing for two weeks and nobody notices?" I asked accusatorily, rounding on the headmaster.**

** "****As far as the school was concerned, Nester was vacationing with his roommate." Sanders put a file on Brennan's desk, in front of Booth, and obscuring the first few keys on the right of Brennan's keyboard as well as covering most of one of her reports on a WWI victim. "The school requested and received a waiver from Ambassador Olivos."**

** "****I was in Venezuela last year," Brennan inputted, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear, showing she didn't enjoy the conversation and wished that she could control it more. Which made sense, we were in her office. "It's very unstable, politically."**

**Sanders nodded once, acknowledging the statement. "It's true, the family received threats. We were cognizant of that. But you aren't seriously suggesting that some kind of Venezuelan hit squad assassinated a student at Hanover Prep?"**

** "****Well, we have ruled it a homicide. Why don't you tell us what we're implying?" Booth said, leaning back and appearing fully at home in Brennan's revolving task chair.**

** "****Like the doctor said, it's a simple case of a depressed boy ending his life." The headmaster laughed shortly. "Not a Tom Clancy novel."**

** "****We'll be starting with Nester's roommate tomorrow morning." Booth said simply, without leaving room in the statement for argument. It was officially his jurisdiction, so if he didn't appear up to persuasion, then Hanover's employees were outta luck.**

**Sanders went to the difficulty of smiling, however false it was. "It's your investigation."**

* * *

><p><strong> "<strong>**Dr. Temperance Brennan, Holly Kirkland, meet Sid, the owner."**

**Booth gestured grandly to a Chinese man in front of him. I bowed quietly to the man, who bowed back in return. Sid had very short brown hair and wore loose pants and a button-up shirt with the top and last buttons undone. He had decisively Asian features but, despite the usual estrangement shown in this city by foreigners, Sid definitely looked and felt like he belonged. He did own this restaurant, ****_Wong Foos_****, after all, so it made sense; he was in his own domain.**

**Booth had decided that we all needed to relieve ourselves of some stress, so he'd insisted that Brennan and I leave the Jeffersonian for a while and let him take us to a good restaurant he knew. Although Brennan and I had been persuaded to come, we'd been reluctant for very different reasons; Brennan didn't want to leave her work, while I was mostly opposed to going to Booth's idea of a good restaurant. Unlike McDonalds or a trashy street bar, it was bound to be expensive. Everything Booth wears or uses usually screams pricey, so I was no stranger to the idea that he had no financial issues. This made me wary about going to a high-priced restaurant, but if they knew the extent to which I struggled with money, they might report the issue to child services, in which case the somewhat-emancipation I'd managed to grasp would be taken away by the foster system.**

** "****Hey, the bone lady," Sid said, recognizing Brennan slightly. He surveyed me quickly. "And the partner in justice."**

**I closed my eyes and sighed briefly. When would the media stop running their stories on me? My brash reactions to them during the Masruk case, coupled with reports of my presence at the Hamilton Cultural Center to stop Masruk, had only boosted my popularity.**

** "****The sign says 'Wong Foos'," Brennan pointed out, looking over her shoulder at the entrance for a moment.**

** "****Family name changed at Ellis Island," Sid explained gruffly. Like Farid Masruk, his English was clipped as a result of it being a learned language. "I'll get your meals," he said as he led us to an unnecessarily large booth in a darker corner of the restaurant. The velvet booth was comfortable, and high enough for me not to get the light from the overhanging lamp fixture above the table shining in my eyes.**

**Brennan looked after him as she shifted onto the booth next to me and across from Booth. "But we didn't order!" She called after him.**

**Booth shook his head, drawing her attention away from Sid's retreating form. "No, Sid knows what most people want better than they do."**

**Zach, Angela, and Hodgins came through the doors, looked around a moment, and then made a beeline straight for us. Booth groaned audibly and Brennan's eyebrows raised, curiosity piqued by her colleagues' presence. Hodgins and Angela slid in on either side of Booth while Zach took the seat next to me, trapping me between himself and Brennan. My gut twisted nervously; I hated feeling trapped, and I took a deep breath to calm down. I was safe here. None of these people were a threat to me.**

** "****Nester's bones are completely normal," Zach announced, not noticing my short anxiety attack. I'd gotten good at reigning them in. "Not brittle in any way." Zach took some some pictures from a file of Olivos' bones and laid them out across the table.**

**Booth sighed and massaged his temples with his fingers. "You know, this is kind of my little getaway place. You know?" He stressed.**

**Angela ignored Booth, instead addressing Brennan and I and bringing us up-to-speed. "It proves the rope marks left in the branch where Nester was hanging are too deep for his weight."**

** "****Please, everyone," Booth said, on the fence between sighing and pleading.**

** "****The works all indicate that the insects which fed on the body are all indigenous to the tree in which he was found," Hodgins nodded along with his own words. "It means he died there approximately ten to fourteen days ago." Sid happened to walk a few feet away at that moment and Hodgins leaned over slightly, bracing himself on the edge of the table as he leaned out of the Booth. "I'll have the seven organ soup!"**

**Brennan shook her head very slightly. "You don't order, the guy just… brings it," she said, obviously unused to this kind of treatment.**

** "****He didn't void," Zach added, steering the conversation back to the point. "Usually, somebody hangs themselves, the floodgates open. Bodily fluids everywhere."**

**I stared down at the table, my groaning very slightly in the back of my throat. I wasn't usually squeamish, but the clinical wording coupled with the unfamiliar, bold, spiced scents of the Chinese cuisines weren't being very kind, especially not with the near anxiety attack. I still caught myself wondering how much Zach weighed and therefore how much force it would take to shove him out of his seat, or how hard it would be to get my heels under me and scramble over the back of the booth.**

** "****There was plenty of the affluent in his clothes, but they are all post-decomp," Hodgins modified. "As the body swells, it bursts from internal gases. How does the guy know what you want?" He asked, melding his sentences so he couldn't be interrupted before his curiosity was sated.**

** "****The guy has a knack," Brennan explained vaguely, repeating what Booth had told her in the car.**

** "****The guy's name is Sid," Booth interjected, still trying to massage away a headache.**

**Zach exhaled quickly before continuing with his reasons for coming here. "The birds ate his eyes and ears. They worked their way into the skull." He now scattered a few pictures from the crime scene over the table and tucked the empty yellow envelope under his leg.**

** "****Birds pecking at the soft tissue of the throat," Hodgins hypothesized, pointing at Brennan. "Could that crack the hyoid?"**

**I answered in the middle of carefully breathing through my mouth, not wanting to made my nerves and the scents around me flare up into a bad mix of ill-timed nausea. I hadn't been sleeping well and I hadn't been sleeping much; the stress of being guarded constantly, of not having been to my home in a while, and of nearly being shot, of shooting someone, of nearly being lit on fire, of taking down a terrorist required more time and solace than I'd been able to give myself. "No, it's a stress fracture caused by the rope against the throat, not post mortem."**

**Angela sighed and gave Brennan and I soft sympathetic looks. "You put a highly sensitive adolescent in a high-pressure prep school, add social alienation, cultural differences, pressure from high-achieving parents… could be suicide."**

** "****It's not a suicide, okay?" Booth declared shortly.**

**Brennan couldn't resist the snarky comment. "Because Booth thinks that prep schools turn out entitled criminals."**

** "****We all went to private schools and none of us are criminals," Hodgins said to Booth, sounding offended at the insinuation.**

** "****In fact, we fight criminals," Zach contradicted. "We're crime fighters."**

** "****No, you're not," Booth said loudly, complaining and upset he wasn't getting his way. "You're…" I gave him a look and he rolled his eyes, huffing. "I'm just saying it's not a suicide!""**

**Angela nodded sagely, humming lightly. "I'm a big believer in instinct."**

** "****Finally," Booth said in relief, gesturing to Angela thankfully. "A squint with an open mind."**

**Angela smirked and I had no doubt something perverted was flashing through her mind. Angela's one flaw, as far as I could tell, was that she was very sexually-oriented. "You have no idea of how open-minded I can be," she purred. ****_I don't think anyone wants to know how open-minded you are, Angela._**

**Sid came back with two other waiters. Both balanced a dark tray with both hands, dishes spread out to balance the weight. Steam trailed up, illuminated by the low lighting, and disappeared up to the ceiling in little translucent wisps. The waiters grimaced and looked around the pictures on the table in horror. Sid scowled. "What's with these pictures? This is a restaurant! People come here to eat." He sent dirty looks around. "What's the matter with you people?" Sid reached over the table's surface and lifted up the pictures, gathering them into a haphazard pile and turning them upside down, shoving them onto Zach's lap. He looked up at Booth, his eyes narrowed. "Booth, what the hell did you bring into my place?"**

**I had to bite my lip to keep myself from smiling. The guy's reaction was pretty amusing. Booth raised his hands and quickly denied the accusation. "I had nothing to do with it."**

**Brennan had no reaction to Sid's anger, instead swallowing a spoon of the Chinese soup in front of her. "This is exactly what I want," she said enthusiastically. "This is amazing. The guy definitely has a knack," she told Booth in full agreement.**

**Hodgins got his seven organ soup in front of him, apparently, because he rubbed his hands together. "Ooh, so you do take orders?" He confirmed excitedly.**

** "****Of course we do," Sid said gruffly, not very happy with us. "But it's always better when you leave it to me. Booth?"**

**Booth nodded. "Okay, I will take care of it." Sid nodded, reassured, and stalked back off towards the kitchens. Booth looked back to Hodgins. "You're saying that the boy died like ten to fourteen days ago?"**

** "****Hey, bugs buzz, but they do not lie," Hodgins said, grinning roguishly as he started on his soup. I looked down to the unidentified cuisine I had; it seemed light and everyone else was enjoying themselves (sort of) so I shrugged and started eating.**

**Brennan swallowed again, looking up to Booth and loyally commending her employee. "Hodgins is very good at using insects to ascertain time of death."**

**Booth looked grimly triumphant and my jaw dropped as I realized what Booth had. "Then how do we explain the email sent to Ambassador and Mr. Olivos only a week ago from Nova Scotia?" I asked, tilting my head as I came to the conclusion.**

**Booth nodded before continuing about how the situation was fishy and that Hodgins really should have just let Sid handle his order. Hodgins got a wicked smirk on his face when Angela told Hodgins not to listen to Booth.**

** "****No, no, you've got to taste it," he said, holding up a spoon of his soup.**

** "****I can smell it from here," Angela dismissed uneasily.**

** "****Angela, it's so good," Hodgins tried to sway her, taking another spoonful. "Mmm."**

**Angela flinched and looked away. "That's so gross."**


	11. The Boy in the Tree, Part Three

"You want me to lead an interrogation." Nod. "On my own." Nod. "With a district attorney, a teenage suspect, and the suspect's parents?" Nod. "Without you." Nod.

I looked through the one-way mirror to Nester Olivos' roommate, Tucker something. He had pale blonde hair that suggested he was going for the windswept look and a slight tan. He wore a button-up flannel and jeans. His mother had platinum hair that fell down like an inverted curtain around her face. She had on a black pencil skirt and pink blouse and his father had a firm jawline, slacks, and a business suit with a necktie. The district attorney, or DA, sat on the side of the rectangular table, clean-cut business suit and all, and a black briefcase with a numerical lock was on the floor by his feet.

I looked back to Booth, perfectly confused. The FBI agent wanted me to conduct the interrogation; I wasn't entirely sure what angle he was working at. His reasoning was that I'd been proven to hold my own and Tucker might feel more inclined to answer someone his own age. "You're sure about this?" I asked warily. Although I'd love to be in the crime-solving ranks, I wasn't FBI, and Booth could write a novel filled with just several reasons why I shouldn't be allowed this right.

"Go on, kid. You'll do fine," Booth said, ushering me to the door. I sighed, bracing myself for however this would end, and stepped through, trying to put on a tough air. No way Tucker would confess all to a little girl. I'd likely have better luck if I put on a tougher act. I confidently pulled out the chair across from the three being held for questioning and spun it around, balancing on my knees on the chair's surface, leaning over the table and propping myself up with my elbows.

"Hey," I said. "My name's Holly Kirkland. I'm in alliance with the FBI and I'll be doing the questioning."

Tucker's eyes widened as I said my name. "You're the kid that shot the senator's aid!" He exclaimed, pointing. His mother gave him a stern look and he stopped pointing.

"Yeah. He deserved it, too. He murdered his girlfriend and her fetal child and then tried to light myself and Dr. Brennan on fire," I said firmly, leaving no room for argument and closing the discussion. "So, Tucker. You and Nester were roommates for three months, yeah?"

"Yes, ma'am," Tucker mumbled.

"And you invited him to spend the vacation with you?"

Tucker looked up slightly, but it was his mom that replied for him. "We have a summer home on Cape Breton with plenty of room."

"But for some reason, Nester didn't enjoy rolling with your boys, and he decided to go back home to Venezuela." I fixed a piercing gaze on the submissive teen from Hanover. "What did the other kids say about him?"

"Nester was different," Tucker said meekly, trying to not seem as intimidated as he obviously was. He searched for the right words, trying to be sensitive to the subject, but also trying to convey his meaning. "He used to be deaf, so he kind of talked like…" He paused before saying, "Some kids called him a retard."

His mother closed her eyes and shivered as if she was cold. "Tucker, please don't say retard."

"I never called him that!" Tucker fervently denied, his emotions getting the better of his timid character. He looked up at me for once. "He went to church every Sunday even though nobody made him go. People thought that was weird."

"Did he have a girlfriend?" I asked, raising my eyebrows suggestively. Although I was never involved in sex scandals and… you know, actually never had a relationship with anyone (shut up, I know it's sad, okay?! Most people my age have had several…), I wasn't stupid, and I knew that guys, teenage ones especially, will go to great lengths to get laid. Maybe Nester's girlfriend didn't appreciate that.

Tucker sighed reluctantly but answered. I got the feeling he felt like he was betraying his friend. "He said there was a girl he liked, but he never told me who."

I glared, hardening my gaze and staring into his eyes. "You know," I said softly, but there was an undertone of danger in my voice. Through my life, I'd mastered controlling my tone. The only times I couldn't was when I was under extreme duress. "You're lying to the FBI."

"Careful, miss Kirkland," the DA cautioned, speaking for the first time.

"No, you shut up," I said, not looking away from Tucker. "I'm a minor, not officially in the FBI, I just happen to be assisting them. I have no jurisdiction, and therefore it's just like Tucker's being manipulated. Sad that it happens, yeah, but the legal system can't do a thing about it. So," I said, reverting back to the nervous teenager. "An email was sent to Nester's parents from Nova Scotia, saying what a great time he was having. Only thing about it is that he was already dead."

"Was it you, Tucker?" Tucker's mom asked, shifting in the chair to look at her son in concern.

"I'd prefer he didn't answer," the DA advised.

"No Dawn," Tucker's father said abruptly to his wife. "If it was Tucker, he has to admit to it."

I couldn't help but feel sorry for the attorney – why was he even here if no one was listening to him? Granted, that was partly my fault, but whatever, I can be hypocritical if I want. "You know the dodge," Tucker said, shamefully avoiding looking at either of his parents.

I leaned back, relieving the boy of some of the pressure. "You backed him up so he could be with a girl," I said matter-of-factly.

"Tucker!" His mother gasped.

"I know! I'm sorry, but he begged me!"

"What girl?" I interrupted.

"I told you!" Tucker exploded suddenly, hitting the sides of his fist on the table. "I don't know! I thought Nester made her up. I sent an email, that's all!"

* * *

><p>"He had a girlfriend?" Brennan clarified from my words.<p>

I leaned over her desk, my hair falling down over my shoulders as I nodded. The mostly-empty room was good for hypothesizing; although I knew Brennan wouldn't approve of conjecture, I had a feeling I could make her at least consider a reasonable scenario.

"So here's what I figure; Nester leaves Nova Scotia and meets up with a pretty girl, who, for some reason yet to be determined didn't really appreciate the gesture. She gets mad, she kills him and stages it as suicide. Strangle him with a rope, use a ladder to shove him into the noose. Knock him unconscious and then find a way to pull him up the tree. Something, it's got to be possible."

"Although it is mere conjecture-" See? "-It may be worth looking into," Brennan decided, nodding at me. "Commendable work in the interrogation, Holly."

_Knock knock. _I looked up. Dr. Goodman was standing in the open threshold, his closed fist paused up in the air by the open door as if to knock again. "Dr. Brennan, miss Kirkland," he greeted. "Can you spare a moment for the Venezuelan ambassador?"

"Thank you," Ambassador Olivos said to Dr. Goodman as the latter gave Brennan and I meaningful looks and turned to walk away.

"Is there something I can do for you?" Brennan asked curiously as the ambassador approached. I moved to the side, behind Brennan's monitor, so that the woman could stand beside me opposite Brennan.

The ambassador handed Brennan a staged school photograph of her son. "I understand that you are very good at your job, Dr. Brennan," she said cordially. "But I think that you are not a mother, correct?"

Brennan swiveled her chair slightly so she was facing the ambassador more than she was me. "No, I'm not a mother," she answered truthfully.

The ambassador's eyes looked sad and haunted. She passed a DVD to Brennan, her hands trembling as the anthropologist accepted the disc. "Please watch this." Brennan looked at me for a moment, but I shrugged and motioned to the disc reader on the side of her monitor. Brennan nodded and carefully inserted the disc, sliding the little platform back into the system computer. The ambassador continued, excusing the nonverbal conversation. "All a mother wants to know is that she has raised her child well. That he will grow up to be a good man. I will never see this. I will never know." Brennan hit play and I leaned over her desk to see the monitor of a computer. A little child was sitting on a hospital bed, a man in a lab coat standing by the side. Just at the edge of the camera was the ambassador's face and she signed to her son while talking, a note of delirious hysteria in her voice. "_Te amo! Te amo!" I love you! I love you!_

The ambassador lifted her chin as she heard her own voice through the speakers. "The day Nester received his implant."

"The first day he could hear," Brennan whispered, obviously affected by the show of emotion in the ambassador's on-screen voice.

"And the first thing he heard was my voice. I told him I loved him. The child who has lived through this miracle would never take his own life." The ambassador blinked, holding sobs at bay. She nodded to Brennan respectfully. "You're a scientist. You need more than a mother's reassurance. Fine. My husband and I have many enemies, that is why I sent Nester to Hanover. They promised us that he would be safe. What if they failed? They would not want to admit it. They would do everything they could to bias you towards suicide."

"I promise you, Ambassador Olivos, if your son's death was a homicide, we will find not only that, but the person who did it," I said powerfully. "The Jeffersonian seems to have a knack for it."

The ambassador of Venezuela nodded to me, dipping her head respectfully. "Thank you."

* * *

><p>"I want to take another look at Nester's room," Booth said. It took him way too long to explain this to us, after kidnapping Brennan and I for nearly an hour and driving to Hanover before finally telling us why he'd done that.<p>

"What, exactly, do you hope to find?" Brennan asked, humoring him as we entered the bright lighting of the stairwell.

I looked up, trying to guess how long it would take to scale all the stairs to Nester's dormitory. My eyes locked with a stranger's. He wore a dark blue suit and had cropped hair. His eyes widened when he saw me. "Booth!" I shouted, getting the idea that the man maybe wasn't supposed to be there. I pointed up at him and he started to turn, running away, confirming my theory.

On automatic, I shoved my way past the FBI agent, who sprang into action about a second later. I took the steps two at a time, vaulting myself up the staircases. When I came to a landing, I grabbed the banister and used my momentum to swing around and continue the pursuit. Booth was hot on my heels, and Brennan ran after us just a little bit slower.

"Stay back!" Booth called up to me.

If possible, I only increased my speed as I saw a door closing. I shoved it open. "No chance," I muttered, walking into Nester's dorm room. So this was why the man was here – the window was ajar. That must be how he got in. But… where was he? I got here maybe ten seconds after him…

Movement flashed at the corner of my eye. I turned and assaulted the man as he dove for the window. He jumped up and lashed out at me, his hand striking my face. The single ring he wore sliced at my cheek in passing and I felt the sensation of warm blood sluggishly rolling down my skin. I socked him in the jaw. His head snapped back as he kicked out at my shins. I jumped out of his range and lashed out, kicking him in the stomach. His hands went down and twisted around my ankle, so I pulled back my leg. He followed, pulling back, and I shot my leg out again, uncoiling the muscles, and because he'd been pulling, it was no trouble to land a solid hit in his stomach. Shocked, he let go and stumbled back.

He came back for another round after a second, trying to fight back, but he was dazed and I was on self-defense mode. Once I get like that, it takes a bit to calm me down, and my vision is sharp but my rationale is shaken a little loose. I've been in so much danger before, that now when I feel threatened, I blast into a defensive, and from that, I usually go on offensive. I fisted the man's collar as he came back and fired three solid hits to his face with my fist. The third time, he stumbled. I let go and he fell down, eyes rolling back into his head.

A hand landed on my shoulder. I whirled around, hair flying out around me. The hand on my shoulder was joined by another on my opposite shoulder and held me in place for a moment. I blinked rapidly; the contact wasn't aggressive. I recognized Booth, watching me in concern, while Brennan nudged the unconscious man with the toe of her shoe. "You alright?" Booth asked me.

I nodded, feeling reason wash over me again. Booth reached up to my face and wiped a thin stream of blood away. The whole situation seemed pretty paternal; I wanted to be angry at him for touching me, but I wasn't. He'd acted out of concern, and aside from that, if he hadn't temporarily restrained me, I might have attacked him or Brennan if they'd gotten too close to me before I regained my bearings.

Booth's eyes lingered on me for a moment before he seemed to take my word for it. He pulled his arms back and joined Brennan by the unconscious body. Brennan had a billfold out and was looking through it. "His name's Tovar Comara," she announced. "He's security at the Venezuelan embassy."

"If he's security, then why did he run?" I grumbled, feeling the slice on my face. The blood kept dripping and my normally pale skin was probably stained light red. See? This is why I don't usually wear jewelry.

* * *

><p>We called in the incident, and before we knew it, the ambassador was at Hanover's headmaster's office. With her were two security guards, and, of course, Comara, who was looking worse for wear, with bruises forming on his face and a black eye already starting to show. They, accompanied with one of Hanover's maids, were in the office with Brennan, Booth, and I. The headmaster and Sanders were absent, taking care of affairs with the bureau.<p>

The ambassador sat at the headmaster's desk, her security on either side. I was seated in the chair across from her, the maid attending to my injury. She was on her knees with her back straight and a first aid kit by her side. Booth and Brennan were standing so that I could have my cut taken care of with more ease.

"What we would like to know is what Mr. Comara was doing in Nester's room," Brennan said, her arms crossed.

I hissed. "Ah! Ow! F***, that stings!" The maid didn't flinch back, but just kept the hydrogen peroxide-soaked cloth at my cheek. Usually I can tolerate pain from peroxide without complaining, but this time it'd been a while since the skin had torn, and so all the particulates from the air had gotten into the cut, so it was about three times as worse as normal. Not to mention the maid didn't give any warning.

"I am truly sorry," Comara apologized again to me. "I did not realize your intent and purposes of appearance until after the moment."

"I asked Mr. Comara to go to Nester's room to prove the point that suicide was not the only possibility," the ambassador explained patiently. "I assure you, I did not send him with instructions to assault anyone that found him, and your injury, miss Kirkland, was not anticipated."

"You wanted to prove that an outsider can get to your son," Booth nodded, understanding.

"The school informed me that Nester's death was most certainly a suicide and that anything else was impossible."

"We proved them correct," Comara said, sounding distressed as he nursed his sore stomach. "I failed to escape without being detected."

I sighed, clenching my fists as the maid pressed a cotton swab against the luckily clean and shallow slice and held it in place by taping a band aid over it. It should be healed in a few days, and in a few hours I could take off the band aid and cotton. She rubbed my bloodstained cheek with an alcoholic wipe, scrubbing off the lingering color from the blood.

"Your intentions were honorable, but the way you went about it was not," I said to the ambassador. The maid stepped away and I brought my hand up to cup my face. It stung slightly. "Firstly, intrusion and hostile assault wasn't the only way for your son to be killed. He could have been caught alone, off school grounds or in the forest, by someone he trusted, which is a likely possibility. Also, you should have consulted with the FBI about our investigation. The school lied to you. We've already ruled it a homicide."

The ambassador looked startled before nodding slightly. "I apologize. I was misinformed."

"I won't press charges," I said, shaking my head slightly. Not only could I not afford a lawyer, but it was just a silly scrape. Besides, it wasn't worth going to court with Venezuelan officials just for a bit of satisfaction.

"Thank you," the ambassador told me, negligent of eye contact, which told me she really was sorry. She stood up. "Please excuse me. I must prepare my driver to depart back to the embassy so that you may continue with your reasons for being here initially."

She left the door open behind her as she left. Booth looked to Comara smoothly. "Do you think Nester was killed by outsiders?"

"Not Venezuelan insurgents," Comara confessed after a moment. "They would make a statement. Not fake a suicide. This is hanging." He sniffed slightly, rubbing a bruise on his jawbone. "_Willa mala."_

"Hmm," Brennan hummed.

Booth sighed exasperatedly. "Sure you know someone says, you know, 'it smells' in a Spanish accent and all of a sudden you're like, 'hmm, interesting!'"

* * *

><p>"What are we looking for?" I asked, looking around Nester's room.<p>

It was pretty calm, color-wise. He liked more dull colors; the walls were all a tan cream and his sheets were white, with a grey fuzzy blanket. The pillow was fuzzy and dark blue, and the bedside table and bed were the same color brown. The mattress was just a normal white, a little less bright than the sheets due to aging. The carpet was soft but not extravagant. It was plain, a shaggy silver rug. The cabinets were polished excessively. Touching one, it was very smooth. I couldn't feel the general bumps that came with department store wood. He had lots of CDs and a very basic radio/CD player on the floor. His desk was neat and organized. This told me he preferred extra stimulus to make up for needing an implant to hear. He would rather have excessive sensory input through touch than to hear everything all the time. I could understand; people are conditioned for loud and sudden noises as they grow through infancy. Nester was older than three when he had the implant.

"I talked to a few of Nester's teachers and a few students that he hung out with," Booth said, looking around. "He was a loner. Well, I mean he went to his classes, but, you know, mainly he just stayed here in his room. That's it, so I figured we'd come here and you could do your little anthropologist things."

I sighed, looking around further. "He liked to feel things. They were distracting from the overwhelming auditory stimulation. No matter how long he had it, he couldn't hear for the time when people become conditioned to auditory stimulus. He liked music, too," I mentioned, pointing at the bookshelf. Then I pointed over at the desk. "He liked to keep things tidy because he didn't want to feel inferior to his life like he had when he felt disabled and controlled by his inability to hear."

Brennan moved slowly to the music shelf. She pulled out a few albums. Three of the four she pulled out were things with lots of percussion, like tribal music. "Heavy procession, low frequencies for the most part. It's the stuff he probably liked before the implant. He could feel the vibrations in his chest." Brennan put them back and moved her hand further down the row, selecting other, lighter-colored CD cases. "After the implant, he started enjoying stuff with more melody. He was growing, he enjoyed it."

Booth spread his arms, smiling widely. "And enjoyment is the opposite of suicide!"

Brennan scowled, putting the CDs back where she found them. "You've decided this isn't a suicide, so you're collecting evidence to support that. By closing your mind, you're missing important indicators!"

I sighed. Really, a blind idiot could tell there was some definite sexual tension in between them. Even though Booth supposedly has a lady friend already. Booth fished through the trash, letting Brennan's words fall upon deaf ears. With a little puff of triumph, the FBI agent pulled out a CD. "Oh yeah?" He asked, smirking at Brennan victoriously. "So why did he throw this away?" He looked at the cover of the disc. "I mean, hey, it's flute music, that's reason enough, but where's the case?"

Brennan looked back to the shelf and scanned through with her eyes before frowning. "These aren't organized."

I walked over by her and looked through the shelves, recognizing the pattern of organization. "Ugh. Girls usually organize things alphabetically, chronologically, or by color. Guys organize things by their worth. He threw that away?" I looked up to the top left. They were kept in pristine condition; further along the row, one of the CDs had a crack in the case and they weren't as well kept. I went straight to the bottom right and found the CD title with a flute instrumental and pulled it out of the line, popping it open. A plain disc, burnt from a laptop, was innocently inside.

"If he threw it away, why did he re-burn it?" Brennan asked, looking at the CD.

I squinted at the disc. It was thicker than most CDs, and just barely even fit in the case. "It's not a CD," I decided. "It's a DVD."

* * *

><p>I hid my rosy face behind my knees, wrapping my arms around my legs and trying to disappear into the floor. Moans and gasps came from Angela's sound system and I frantically tried to keep my eyes from meeting the computer monitor's projection across the wall.<p>

"I should have known," Booth sighed, disappointed. "It's a fifteen year old boy. It's just porn."

"_Just _porn? You mean it's not bad enough?! I'm a minor! I don't want to watch other minors have sex! This is literally illegal! Why do I have to watch it with you perverts?" I wailed miserably, closing my eyes tightly and covering my face for good measure. Everyone ignored me dutifully, dismissing my miserable shouts.

"Wait," Brennan said as Booth started to get up.

"That's our hanging victim," Angela declared, having run recognition programs to get a positive match.

Zach was staring at the screen in earnest captivation. "This is pretty kinky stuff."

My cheeks flamed again. "Can we just shut up about the DVD, please?!"

"I need to know where and when it was shot," Brennan told Angela, not seeming too affected by the lewd noise coming from the speakers. "What kind of camera, and anything else that might help."

"I'm going to need stills and close-ups of the girl's face," Booth told Angela, loading onto the woman's workload and time with the forsaken sex tape.

Hodgins lurched forward slightly and choked, coughing. "Thanks a lot, Booth," he groaned. "My seven organ soup is repeating on me."

"Well, you ordered," Booth said helplessly. "You should have left it to Sid." He looked up to Brennan. "Let's see what the school has to say about this."

"Yes!" I jumped up, maybe a little too enthusiastically. "Out of here! School! Van! Let's go!"

* * *

><p>Sanders crossed his arms as the sex tape was paused on the headmaster's desk computer monitor. "We've seen this kind of thing before."<p>

"Illegal pornography?" I asked, skeptical. Maybe it wasn't weird for kids to sleep together in this day and age, but it was still illegal to tape it.

"Young people are more jaded than they used to be," the headmaster said, not really giving the impression that he cared. "Sometimes they swap these tapes."

"I've had it tough, but I've never had the urge to tape myself having sex. At all. Not even a remote little thought at the back of my conscience. I have a hard time believing that your excuse will hold up against the law," I pointed out, scoffing.

"I'm surprised to see Nester," Sanders confessed to Booth, completely ignoring me. I sighed.

"But not so surprised to see the girl?" Booth asked, raising his eyebrows at the unspoken sentence.

"How is that relevant?" The headmaster laughed the slightly wheezy chuckle of an uneasy man.

"You know what's a better question?" Brennan asked, annoyed with the two of the men who kept interfering in our leads. "What makes you think you get to decide what's relevant? You're basically the principal of the high school.

"We need to see all the sex tapes that you've confiscated," Booth declared, rocking back on his heels.

"Absolutely not," the headmaster said, folding his hands on his desk and wearing a small smile of innocence.

Booth's eyes narrowed for a moment before he shrugged. "Oh, well. I'll just go get a warrant and, in the application for a warrant, I'll include your admission that you allow your students to swap homemade sex tapes."

"The headmaster is not refusing to provide you with the tapes," Sanders denied peacefully, with a bit of mirth.

"'Absolutely not' sounds like a refusal to me," I argued, holding my hands up in the air.

"When we confiscate the tapes, we immediately turn them over to local law enforcement," Sanders elaborated, tilting his head to the side arrogantly. Damn… they obeyed law, and so we couldn't do anything to them.

"Sheriff Roach knew about this?" Booth looked slightly stung, like he'd trusted the sheriff who then put a knife in his back.

"No need to issue a warrant." A ghost of a smile passed over Sanders's face. "We are cooperating completely."

"Was the girl also a student here?" Brennan inquired.

The headmaster shared a look with Sanders before saying airily, "Given your hostility, it's time we bring in a lawyer to advise us."

I twitched, my hands balling into fists at my sides. "Or you take my advice – if you don't answer our questions, I'll handcuff you to the rear bumper of Booth's van and literally drag you down the highway to the FBI headquarters via automobile," I threatened, taking a step forward challengingly.

Sanders looked amused while the headmaster looked only mildly disturbed. Brennan nodded seriously at them. "She'll do it. She doesn't like you," she explained needlessly. I shook my head at them to confirm what she said and raised my eyebrows. _You wanna go, pal?_

The headmaster seemed to not want to risk it. He sighed heavily, making his opinion on the situation crystal clear. "Fine, Agent Booth. Her name is Camden Destri."

* * *

><p>"Nester Olivos?" Camden looked up through long, mascara-soaked lashes at Booth. "I knew him. He's kind of famous since he died."<p>

"Poor kid, to take his own life." Camden's mom sighed, shaking her head in sadness as she blinked rapidly.

"Were you romantically involved?" I asked Camden, keeping my gaze straight on her.

"No," Camden denied, putting on the voice of a sweet child. If I didn't know better, I would probably actually believe her, too.

Mrs. Destri crossed her legs, folding her hands neatly on her lap and sitting up straight, obviously proud of her daughter's views. "Camden is too young to date seriously."

Booth made eye contact with me and let his head roll to the side. He picked up the remote to the TV set at the front of the room. It was a small TV on a rolling cart, but when the agent pressed the little red power button and the screen brightened, playing a lewd, scandalous video of Camden, it sure did its job. Camden's light hair was slung back over her shoulders, tangling in itself as it flew around when her head jerked back. "You know, if anything good comes from this tape, at least you know that you have exceptional balance," I told Camden as the recorded version of herself managed to stay on her knees without falling back or forwards at all.

"Tell me when you've seen enough to start telling the truth!" Booth shouted irately.

"This is outrageous, Agent Booth!" The lawyer protested, leaning forward in his seat and moving his hands, vehemently gesticulating with his protest.

Camden's eyes widened and her lower lip started trembling. Her breath caught and she shuddered violently. "Oh my God!" She cried. Although she was horrified by the recording, she couldn't seem to tear her eyes from the television set. "I can't believe this." The on-screen Venezuelan boy dipped his head to bite on the on-screen Camden's jugular. Although I understand that this is supposedly a big turn-on, it looks more like a death wish to me. I mean, really, bite down and pull hard and you're dead. "Oh my God! Where did that come from?"

The lawyer took his glasses off, wiping the lenses with a little handkerchief. "Really, Mr. Booth, Miss Kirkland, I must protest."

"I am tired of being lied to, so excuse me if I'm indelicate!" Booth shouted at the lawyer, not calming down. Either way, he seemed to get that Camden's expression was abhorred and his conscience made him turn off the TV again. "Okay, let's start over, shall we? Did you know Nester Olivos, and were you romantically involved?"

"Why would he do that?" Camden had tears streaming from her eyes and down her tanned face. "Why would Nester tape us? I loved him!" She covered her face in her hands. _Sorry to break it to you, Destri, but I'm guessing he didn't feel the same._


	12. The Boy in the Tree, Part Four

Brennan scoffed loudly as Booth pulled the SUV to a stop outside the county police department. "So let me just get this straight – I'm the tactless and insensitive one?"

Booth raised his hands up to his head, trying to defend himself from Brennan's verbal derision. "Okay, look. The girl lied to a federal agent during the investigation in the death of a boy that she said she loves. You know what? These kids, they all lie! That school teaches them that they're special, that they're above the rest of us. Well-"

"You are the least objective person I have ever met," Brennan observed, interrupting Booth's rant before he could get out of hand.

"Thank you."

"I don't think that was a compliment," I said, rolling my eyes. Why couldn't they just get along for once?

"Aw, come on, Brennan," Booth whined childishly as he pulled the keys out of the ignition. "You know something is wrong here! Alright, the school, the tapes, and now Sheriff Roach!"

"All this mess you're uncovering – it smells, yes, but doesn't add up to murder… not logically!" Brennan argued back.

Booth unlocked the car doors and pushed open the driver's side door, going out feet first. "Maybe if you looked for more than the facts, you would be able to see the bigger pi-"

"Maybe if you opened your mind, we could find out the actual truth!" Brennan heartily accused, interrupting him fiercely.

The sheriff came down the front steps of the department building, holding a cardboard box to her side with one arm. She wore a slight scowl of distaste when she saw us, as Brennan and I crossed around to stand with Booth. The sheriff's appearance made Brennan and Booth stop bickering to save their pride at their public appearances. "Brought you the tapes," the sheriff explained uselessly, shoving the small box into Booth's arms.

"How many?" Brennan asked, looking in the box and trying to count without using her hands to sift through.

The sheriff put her hands on her hips sassily and gave Brennan a cold, calculating look. "All of them," she swore. "What do you think? I'm withholding evidence?"

I resisted the urge to swing at her. The tone she took with Brennan was obviously derogative. I didn't appreciate my own growing feelings of protection towards Brennan, Booth, Hodgins, Zach, and Angela. I knew that protection was my way of showing I cared; I didn't know how to show it through other means, so if I felt like I had to defend them when they were just being verbally roughed up, then I felt close or I wanted to be close with them. They were the nicest people I'd ever met; the most decent to me that anyone's ever been, and they all worked like a TV family; they fought and had petty arguments but they all had each others' backs. That was something that most people took for granted; friendships and supportive allegiances, but they didn't realize how lucky they were most of the time.

"You know, I'm thinking Hanover Prep gets you elected, and you deny your obligations as an officer of the law and look the other way so that you stay in office," I slighted, crossing my arms and taking a step forward.

"Kids having sex. There's no law against that," the sheriff drawled at me, a sickeningly snide tone of voice.

Booth's calm, collected voice answered before I could snap back. "Let's hope that's the worst thing that we find."

* * *

><p>I groaned as I found myself right back in Angela's office. The other tapes were playing on a loop, the artist having burned them to her computer on a file folder. I had my head down in shame. The stupid radio had been playing Madonna's <em>Like A Virgin <em>and I'd been absently humming to it without realizing when it got stuck in my head. Luckily for me, Angela was the only one who recognized the song, and she seemed like she was willing to pretend not to have heard.

"You're right about the school serving pudding," Brennan said offhandedly to Booth.

Booth shook his head, closing his eyes briefly, before correcting her. "Stirring the pudding. It means…"

Brennan stopped him and I found myself just staring at her and Booth in a desperate means of not looking at the screen. "Melody Destri!" She exclaimed, standing up suddenly. "That's Camden Destri's mother! Wait, is that… is that Nester Olivos she's with?"

I really debated with myself for a few seconds, but curiosity won out and I flashed my eyes to the screen, analyzing the features and not the positions. "No, that's… Tucker Pattison, Nester's roommate," I said in surprise as I recognized the flyaway blonde hair.

* * *

><p>"How long did the sexual relationship continue?" I demanded of the ruffled teenager.<p>

Tucker shook his head and tossed up his hands in frustration and desperation. "I don't know! A couple of months?"

Tucker's mom didn't meet her son's eyes, shamed at his actions, but she still defended him from me to the best of her capabilities. "Tucker is the underage victim of statutory rape."

"When did it end?" I ignored his mother. I wasn't interested in his defense; sex wasn't my area of expertise, court and law-wise, and besides, I was more interested in murder than sex scandals.

"That was the last time," Tucker insisted solemnly, actively drawing his hand across his heart to emphasize his truthfulness.

"Why Nester's bed?" My hope was that if I kept asking startling questions without any sense of order or warning of when I was switching approaches, Tucker would be too surprised to deflect or lie. "Why not your own? It was ten feet away."

"I don't know!" Tucker cried, bringing his hands up to his head.

I changed tactics again, pinning accusations on him. "It was because you know exactly where the camera was pointed!"

"Mrs. Destri gave me money to keep quiet!" Tucker finally shouted. He was breaking out in a sweat. I smirked; I'd succeeded and he'd broken to my questioning. I arched one eyebrow, telling him to continue, and Tucker took the only moment of peace since I'd come in to take a breath, rake his fingers through his pale blonde hair, and try to shake out his nerves before explaining further. "Nester said, 'how much you think she would pay to keep her husband from seeing a tape.' Nester set up a drop and got five thousand dollars. He said we should do it again but just before vacation I told him that I was going to tell my parents, even if it meant getting kicked out of Hanover. The next thing I know he killed himself." Tucker's voice became very small and he just drew subconsciously on the table with his fingertip. "I didn't tell because I figured it was my fault."

* * *

><p>"Tabanid pupil casings show the boy ingested a heavy dose of ketamine before he died," Hodgins reported, a slight look of triumph in his expression as he looked between Brennan, Booth, Zach, Angela, and I. "Kids call it Special K."<p>

I shook my head in disgust. "I call Special K a cereal brand. I call ketamine a horse tranquilizer and classify it as something to ingest when I'm feeling particularly suicidal and want to be hospitalized and recorded acting like an irrational moron."

"So somebody dosed him, right?" Booth rubbed his palms together. "That explains why he wasn't struggling before the hanging."

"Or, wild thought? He took it himself for fun, like most kids do!" Brennan countered. For not liking conjecture, she sure is good at it, with the capability to use open-minded observations of society coupled with factual information to come up with real-world, plausible scenarios.

"So I heard you totally nailed the kid in the interrogation," Hodgins prompted slightly, a rouge grin taking place as he shifted, crossing his arms and wanting an explanation.

"I used a technique to startle the adolescent and catch him off-guard in hopes that an increased sense of duress and a difficulty to catch up and lie without making it obvious would cause him to see sense and tell the truth of what happened to the full extent," I said simply with a modest shrug. "I succeeded."

Hodgins looked to Angela for a moment, then jerked his head at me. I narrowed my eyes suspiciously as Angela shook her head wildly, but Hodgins crossed his arms at her and turned back to me. "We've been trying to ignore it, but what happened to your face?"

I lifted my hand to my cheek. I'd almost completely forgotten the band aid sticking to my skin. The unusual feeling had sort of numbed as I'd been distracted by other things. I rubbed along the line of the band aid as I answered. "There was a Venezuelan official trying to sneak into the dorm to prove the point that suicide wasn't the only option. He felt threatened and when I stopped him from escaping, not knowing his identity, he went on the offensive. He was wearing a ring, and it cut me. It's shallow and clean. It should be healed in a couple days."

Hodgins smirked at Angela and whistled, the pitch going from high to low. "The mighty warrior shot down by an office man. How the mighty have fallen."

I crossed my arms and pouted slightly before I could control my reaction. "Actually," I corrected. "I got a cut on the cheek. He got several surface bruises, likely a bruised mandible, sore ribs and a stomachache, and I may or may not have broken his nose."

Hodgins paused for a minute, looking between myself and Angela, who gave him a look that said 'I told you so.' "Fine," Hodgins finally ceded to the artist before telling me, "Remind me never to make you mad at me, Xena." I fought with the urge to roll my eyes at the reference to a warrior princess from an old TV program.

"I had sex with Naomi in Paleontology," Zach announced randomly, but I suppose he thought it was okay to bring up for some reason.

Angela's eyes widened. "You mean, actually in Paleontology?"

"No, at her place," Zach corrected. "I thought it went great, but I could be wrong, because apparently what I think is wild and kinky is basic-" insert sideways look at Hodgins. "-And since she never called me back I'm wondering if it's because I lack imagination in the sack."

"You know what, Zach?" Angela asked, showing the first signs of discomfort. "I'm thinking this is more of a guy-guy conversation."

Zach opened his mouth, but while Hodgins and Booth argued about Hodgins' seven organ soup and how he apparently got salmonella, I took Zach over to the side of the platform and talked quietly to him. "Um, what Angela means is that she feels uncomfortable discussing your sex life with you," I explained, trying to save everyone some embarrassment. "Your inclination to discuss triumphs over sex would be more fitted to discussing with another male due the masculine desire to boast over previous sexual encounters." I was really glad I could keep a straight poker face when I really needed to, or my face would be crimson as the fires of hell.

Zach looked up slowly. "I understand that," he said, sounding almost amazed that I'd been able to explain to him something that had confused him for so long. I would've felt complimented if he hadn't sounded so shocked.

I nodded in agreement, mildly proud of myself anyway.

"Heartburn!" Brennan suddenly exclaimed loudly. I turned around, surprised at the shout.

"What?" Booth asked, looking lost, and so I knew that I hadn't missed anything that anyone else hadn't.

Brennan's triumphant smile was almost contagious. A flicker of happiness fluttered across my expression for a moment before I went back to being neutral as she explained enthusiastically. "Hodgins has heartburn because stomach acid is rising into his esophagus. The ketamine plus choking could have caused Nester to regurgitate. The rope would hold the gastric fluids in the upper throat, weakening the hyoid."

"And digestive fluids are basically the chemical equivalent of hydrochloric acid," I realized, smiling for real as I made the connection. Brennan speed-walked back to the exam table, looking over the remains critically for any indicators supporting her theory.

Zach walked up to about five feet away from Booth and spoke in complete seriousness. "Sometimes when you're not busy, I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about sexual positions." I hit my forehead with my palm – _I meant for you to talk with another male that would humor your questions, not threaten to kill you!_

True to my suspicions, Booth pointed at Zach vindictively. "If you even try, I will take out my gun and shoot you between the eyes."

Brennan bent down over the bones to look at them closely. "These marks here and here – that's scarring consistent with hydrochloric acid."

Booth pretended that Zach didn't look like a kicked puppy and turned his head slightly to the side as he eyed Brennan apprehensively. "I don't like where you're going with this."

Brennan shook her head slightly to herself and she tapped Angela's upper arm, getting the Asian woman's full attention. "I need to run a few scenarios through the Angelatron," she said, getting Angela to speed up.

Booth looked at me quizzically, but I shrugged. I had a sneaking idea of what Brennan's theory might be, but I didn't want to tell Booth since I didn't know for sure, and Brennan would explain to us for sure. I gathered up the will to move and jumped over the stairs leading up to the platform, bunching my hamstrings and bending over to absorb the impact, before setting off at a brisk jog to catch up with Angela and Brennan, who were already at the long staircase that led up to the offices on the balcony.

Angela quickly booted up her computer and holograph projector. It didn't take very long, considering how complex the data input is, but then, everything here at the institution is richly financed. The moment Angela picked up her stylus and the input board, Brennan started firing off instructions. "Replace the values for the hyoid bone mass with these sliding coefficients," she said, sharing a piece of paper between them on a brown clipboard. "That will replicate bone deterioration as the hyoid is being digested by stomach acid."

Angela nodded slightly, looking back up to the projection every few seconds to make sure she had the instructions filed in correctly. "I'm applying a timeline and running in fast-forward. This will show it in measured time."

Booth shook his head slightly at the two as he had nothing to go on as to their actions. Seeing this and taking pity on him, I motioned to the projection as it began to form a close-up image of the hyoid through a translucent throat, with the slight outline of a tightly-pulled noose just barely visible. "The body decomposes, and gastric fluids trapped in the esophagus by the noose would actually digest the hyoid over time, which could have caused the break."

"There!" Brennan pointed up at the hologram suddenly as the half-opaque shape snapped in two. "The hyoid snapped."

"A hundred and ninety-six point three hours…" Angela read from the screen as she paused it in the timeline progression. She did the math quickly in her head, biting her lower lip subtly as she focused. "Just over eight days."

Brennan exhaled slowly as she looked to Booth, her lips pursed in almost regret. "This finding is congruent with suicide."

Booth closed his eyes and shook his head like he was trying to shake off the discovery. "I do not accept that," he declared stubbornly.

"You can't not accept a fact," I pointed out mildly.

Brennan sighed to herself. She must have really thought that Nester Olivos had been murdered, but she'd not found anything to indicate homicide. "I have to amend my cause of death report," she acknowledged.

Booth intercepted her as she started on her path to the door. "Then you'll stop my investigation. The school is trying to cover up a murder, and you're helping them!" He declared strongly, not faltering. Brennan swallowed visibly, but I could see that, despite Booth's efforts to shake her into working through it further, she wouldn't give in to the pressure without a very good reason other than cruel words.

* * *

><p>Brennan and I worked in silence as we went through a final examination of Nester's bones. After this, Brennan would fire up the ultraviolet light and we'd treat the bones before releasing them to the Venezuelan embassy. Although I recognized the subdued nature with which I worked just a little bit more slowly than I had before, I was surprised that I was also noting Brennan's evident frustration. Her jaw was clenched and the silence was forced, not just the result of a lack of a desire to talk.<p>

I set the calcaneus back down on the table. "Dr. Brennan, you did all you could," I said softly. I didn't want to poke, but she shouldn't feel guilty with herself. "Despite popular belief, the results of this investigation are that he most likely committed suicide. At least we got to make sure that a murderer won't walk free."

"I am aware that there is no more that can be done to assist Nester Olivos in his passing," Brennan said firmly, but she still frowned slightly. "I just wish that…"

She trailed off, unable to find the words, but I nodded so that she wouldn't have to try to convey her meaning. "I understand, Dr. Brennan." She hadn't wanted to know someone had committed suicide. Nester Olivos had overcome being deaf. He'd gotten decent grades and with his mother's rank, he could have easily gotten any career he wanted if he'd worked hard for it. It was sad that someone had offed themself when they'd had so much to live for. Nester had Camden, his mother, his father, and Tucker, who was obviously friendly to him due to the willingness to lie in his favor. It would maybe be easier to tell ambassador and Mr. Olivos that their son had, in fact, been murdered, and not that he'd chosen to end his own life. That he hadn't felt life was worth living anymore, and condemn his parents to wondering for the rest of their lives if it was their fault, or if they could have prevented it.

Angela sighed, alerting us to her presence as she approached, her heels clicking as her pace slowed while she scanned the card to access the platform. She clutched an auburn-colored sketchbook tightly, her necklace hitting the large drawing pad with a rattle every time until she drew even with us. "Honey," she asked Brennan, "Did you ever just believe something, despite the evidence, and just know it was true?" Angela's expression looked borderline pleading, telling me that she was feeling the same basic emotions as Brennan and I.

"No," Brennan said without hesitation, shaking her head very slightly as she wanted to stay concentrated. "I've hoped things. I will always know the difference between hope and fact." She left it at that for a moment, but then words just started to spill out of her mouth. "You know, all that's left of this boy is this table full of bones. Now everyone he has ever known has an agenda, his parents, his school – even the cop who's investigating his death! I'm the only one who cares about the truth of what Nester's life came to in the end, good or bad, and I know the truth is more important than anything else."

Angela raised her eyebrows slightly, still sad and therefore lacking the usual bouncy attitude. "You know, or you _hope _it's true?"

Brennan actually paused. She set down the left ulna and put her hands at her sides, her eyebrows furrowing as she did her best to convince herself that what she'd said was true. "Suicide is the most rational, logical explanation. What I believe doesn't matter. What makes me sad doesn't matter."

Angela hummed disappointedly, looking down to the sketchbook she cradled in her arms. Slowly, she changed how she held it and flipped the pages, found the paper she was looking for, and folded the ones in front of it around back behind the rest. Thank God for spiral notebooks; they make life easier. Angela held up a rough sketch of Nester Olivos. Although it wasn't perfect, it was pretty accurate. It was a great testament to her abilities as an artist. "Look at this face," Angela whispered to Brennan. "He did not kill himself." She drew him smiling, his Catholic necklace just barely visible around the half-drawn shoulders.

Brennan smiled despite her words as she found Angela's behavior touching. "Ange, I need a little more proof than a nice drawing." It's more than nice.

"I can do that," Angela promised seriously.

* * *

><p>Angela stood back and let her monitor do the work for her as it projected on a large screen on the wall. "This is not from the DVD," she asserted quickly to us, turning the volume of the sex scene down when I started to turn crimson again and covered my ears. I gave in, rewarding the thoughtful action with removing my hands and instead just trying not to watch the screen. "It's a quick snippet that was on Nester's hard drive. Somebody tried to erase it, but Zach and I got some of it back."<p>

Brennan observed the video without any indication of embarrassment. Must be great to not feel as awkward as I do right now. "Angela, zoom in on that necklace."

Angela drew the stylus across her touch pad. The screen zoomed in to just below Camden's neck and refocused on a little sparkling necklace. The pendant was a detailed seahorse with a slightly orange tinge. "A little seahorse?" Angela voiced, a smile growing on her face. "Come on. What kind of blackmailer does that? It's sweet. It's a clueless kid in love."

Brennan looked to Angela skeptically, looking slightly disappointed. "That's your evidence that he didn't commit suicide? A seahorse?"

"A kid doesn't give a gift because, you know, he's in love," Booth said, scoffing very slightly and glancing at Angela as if scared she would snap his neck. "He does it because he wants a little loving."

I sent Booth a disturbed look. "You must not know very many decent guys," I dictated. Booth gave me an almost insulted look, so I sighed, resigning to explain myself to keep good relations. "In my…" I paused, thinking. "…Fourteenth foster residence, when I was ten, there was an older guy living there too, and he was always doing things for his girlfriend, even though she was a complete bitch. He was totally smitten with her, and I don't remember them ever fighting."

"Rerun that," Brennan directed, ignoring us as the clip ended.

Angela complied, setting the video to play again. "That cynicism you affect, Booth, it's your way of hiding your deeply romantic nature," Angela said with a smirk.

I gagged as Brennan pointed at the camera, jerking slightly in surprise. "There. Stop. Play it again. There! She rolled her eyes for the camera."

"What?" Booth asked, squinting at the screen.

Angela frowned very slightly. "I didn't see it either."

"Could you replay it in slow motion and zoom in on Camden?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at the screen. Angela rewound and paused the tape, then let the video proceed through frames slowly. Sure enough, Brennan had been right. Although it was slight and quick, Camden looked to the camera in exasperation as she rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Oh my God. She lied. She knew the camera was there."

"How did you see that?" Booth demanded in shock, looking from the screen to Brennan.

"Camden's not a victim," Angela sighed, sounding hurt that the girl had lied to us. "She's in on it."

Booth hit the back of his right hand against his left palm. "You don't roll your eyes at yourself. You do it for someone else, not Nester Olivos."

"What do we do now?" Brennan asked.

Booth inhaled sharply. "This is where a public school education comes in handy. 'Divide and conquer' was the playground motto."

My jaw dropped and I stared at him. "What kind of sick, twisted school did you go to?!"

* * *

><p>Camden and her mother were both quite obviously nervous, as they both displayed nervous tics while they sat at the interrogation table. Upon entering, I debated rolling up my sleeves to show I had no issue with playing dirty to get what I wanted, but decided against it. I always wore long sleeves over my arms when I was with other people because of the scars and pain associated with them. I wasn't about to change that just to increase the anxiety of a petty little gossip girl.<p>

"So, Camden," I said casually, trying to pretend to be friendly. I glanced at the Destris' lawyer in brief acknowledgment of legal protection presences. I sat on the edge of the table, bringing one of my legs up to the table to keep my balance. "We could close our murder investigation right now, if you would tell me why Nester killed himself."

"Why is Tucker here?" Camden's focus, however, was preoccupied by the live feed going through the small TV set, streaming live from another interrogation room. Tucker and his mother were in the other room, although they didn't know they were being recorded. In the same situation, a webcam was playing straight to the TV in Tucker's room, but the Destris didn't know that. This had been Booth's suggestion, that by using them against each other, we could legally manipulate them into confessing all. It was perfectly legal, because we could lie, which the government did all the time, about minor things, and we could poke and prod all we wanted. It was fine to insinuate things, too, that seemed incriminating. If we could get each of them to turn on each other, we'd inevitably get the full story.

I exploited this knowledge simply. "Oh, Tucker…" I shrugged, then pulled a deliberately neutral expression. "He said some things."

"What things?" Camden immediately bit the bait, so to speak.

I slowly exhaled all the air in my lungs. "Well, what Tucker said doesn't make you look too good," I confided. "I believe him, but Agent Booth says it's only fair to hear your side. If your stories match up, we'll be able to drop the murder investigation." Camden swallowed, and her breathing was picking up. I resisted the urge to smirk. "You know, I find it hard to believe that it was your idea for Tucker to seduce your mother," I said, making my eyes wide sympathetically. "I mean, we know it happened, or you wouldn't be here, but we don't want to think about the adults in our life getting it on, especially with people we know. It's just wrong."

"It wasn't," Camden agreed immediately, a note of relief in her voice. "She hit on Tucker."

Mrs. Destri's eyes widened and she started to shake her head. "No. Wait, wait." She looked to the lawyer. "Can they do this?"

"She's fishing," the lawyer said firmly, obviously talking about me. "Don't say a word."

I raised my eyebrows cynically. "I wasn't fishing," I said slowly, like it was a stupid suggestion. I looked back to Camden. "Camden, you really want to listen to me. It just makes you look bad if you try to lie any more, and besides, I'm pretty damn intelligent compared to your lawyer. I mean," I lowered my voice slightly, like I was telling her a secret. "He can't tell the difference between hunting marine life for recreational sport and leading an interrogation."

Camden looked to the lawyer almost regretfully, probably having thought he'd be more useful. "Tucker was all, 'Stacy's Mom' about it. I just… sort of gave him the permission. It was funny."

Mrs. Destri lowered her face to look at the table and cupped her face in her hands. "Please stop this. Stop it."

"Mom, deal with it, okay?" Camden snapped, losing her patience for the tenuous discord her mother had caused. "You're the one that's the perv, so…" I nodded with a shrug at Mrs. Destri. It was true. "When my mom gave Tucker money to keep him quiet, we got the idea to blackmail her with the tape. I was mad at her, I guess," Camden started to explain. "Then Tucker said it was my turn."

I saw the wheels beginning to spin and the puzzle pieces started to click. "Nester was rich, lonely, Catholic, estranged from society, and he had a thing for you," I said. Because appearing angry or accusatory wouldn't benefit the case, I did the only thing I could; I kept my voice devoid of all emotions.

"And he was cute," Camden admitted, blushing slightly. "People didn't notice, because of the way he talked, but he was really cute. I liked him. We made the tape and showed it to Nester. It made him really upset… really upset."

"Because you threatened to show it to his mother," I finished. Having met the ambassador, I could take an educated guess that seeing her son exploited into assisting making a sex tape would hurt her. Not knowing that it had been made against his will would be worse. There were two types of sex, as far as I could tell from society; genuine, when it was simply because of the people involved, and exploiting; when it was done for ulterior purposes and led to one or both parties involved being hurt.

"Or because I broke his heart?" Camden suggested sharply. Wow, Booth was right; they teach kids at Hanover to have way high expectations of other people's impressions of them. "I still can't believe he killed himself. I'm really sorry he did that."

The lawyer cleared his throat. "What Camden did was wrong, which she's acknowledged. But she can't be held responsible for an unstable boy's overreaction."

"I said I'm sorry," Camden repeated as I lazily pushed myself off of the table.

"Yeah," I sighed. "Camden Destri, on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I'm placing you under arrest for the murder of Nester Olivos."

"What?" The lawyer started, incredulous. "She's admitted to blackmail and attempted blackmail, that's all. Hardly an offense worth legal detail."

"Nester was going to the headmaster," I told Camden. I had no use pretending to be oblivious or friendly anymore. I had what I needed… on tape, too. "He was going to expose you, so you dosed him with a sedative drug called ketamine and hauled him up into the tree with the noose. If we search your dorm, I assume we'll find the scissors that cut the excess rope after his body was in the tree, and the Jeffersonian Institution will find evidence to further incriminate you via the blades. Also, we're getting a warrant passed as we speak to take a DNA sample, which we'll compare against the noose Nester was hanged in. I'm pretty certain we'll get a hundred-percent match. Plus, you've already confessed to a motive. People have killed for less."

Camden's expression had quickly turned horrified, but now she desperately interrupted me, a hand reaching out to grab my sleeve. She was lucky I'd moved away already, or she might have to go to the hospital before she can go to court. "If I cooperate and tell you everything Tucker did, do I get some sort of deal?"

I tilted my head to the side. Although the initial plan hadn't been necessary to seed the truth out of the girl, it was entirely possible that reverting back to it now could convince Tucker to come completely clean, too. I paused, only a few feet from the door, and turned back, crossing my arms and throwing my weight to say that I was staying in place. "That depends on what else you have to say."

* * *

><p>"Ambassador Olivos, the headmaster and head of security will both be losing their jobs over what happened to your son," I told the woman solemnly. It had taken and hour and then some minutes to see her, but I'd felt as though she deserved to know the outcome of her battle against the school and the loss of her child. Brennan and Booth had agreed with me wholeheartedly, although Booth had seemed a little subdued. I think he was told something by his superiors, because I found out after leaving Camden and her mother that Booth had been called away for a few minutes by an agent.<p>

"The sheriff will resign. The two kids who killed your son are both in custody," Booth added.

The ambassador nodded tightly. "Thank you."

"We're very sorry for your loss," Booth said, repeating himself from the beginning of the case.

Brennan stepped forward without warning, the picture of Nester that the ambassador had given her held gently in her hands. "Ambassador Olivos, you told me that all a mother wants is to know that she's raised her child well." She hesitated, as if to see if she was in the green to continue. "That your biggest regret is that you will never know if Nester would have grown up to be a good man, but he was a good man." She held out the picture now to the distraught ambassador, who accepted the photograph back with shaking hands. "He died because he was trying to do the right thing."

As we left the building and the earshot of the guards at the embassy suite, Booth smiled over at Brennan. "Very impressive, Temperance. You got that one right."

* * *

><p>Booth groaned when we entered Wong Foos again (to my displeasure; yay, another expensive meal) and saw Angela, Zach, and Hodgins making themselves at home already. Angela was telling Zach something, and Zach looked confused, but Angela looked sure of herself. Hodgins was laughing out loud at whatever was being said.<p>

"Oh, no," Booth said, shaking his head at the ground as he stalked over to the booth. I exchanged a look with Brennan (she seemed confused as to his negative reaction) and we followed him over to hear him growling at the other squints. "This isn't going to work. I mean, this is my place. Sid!" He looked over at the manager for help.

Sid shrugged. "As long as they keep it down on the subject of rotten corpses and bodily fluids, I have no beef at all."

"Well, of course you don't. This is a Chinese restaurant," Brennan pointed out.

I shook my head at her slightly. "It's an expression. He meant he has no problem with it."

Booth looked crestfallen at the lack of assistance. Hodgins, if he noticed, didn't care. He raved about the restaurant to Booth enthusiastically. "Okay, this is amazing. I had heartburn. I asked Sid to bring me something and now the heartburn is gone! I mean… it's gone! Man, I love this place!"

Booth's eye twitched and he spread his arms quickly, definitive. "Okay, fine! New rules – that counter is mine. That booth is yours. Everything else around here, alright? Mine. Alright, mine… M-I-N-E. _Mine._"

Brennan smiled at Angela in passing as she followed Booth to the countertop, where Booth waved at a bartender for a drink. "I've been thinking about your whole, 'something stinks' aptitude," she started conversationally, with a hint of apologetics. "I think you have a subconscious knack for reading body language, stress in the voice, other subtle but discernible indicators. It's not mysterious, but it is impressive and in the future, I will try to record it in an appropriate degree of objective worth."

Booth nodded to her, inclining his chin smugly. "Thank you Temperance, I appreciate that." He suddenly looked from her to the bar in front of him. "So, uh, what part of 'this is mine' did you not understand? Do I have to say it in Latin?"

"Holly's here, and you're not objecting," Brennan pointed out, although she didn't actually seem upset.

"Yeah, well, the kid's got a good reason to be around," Booth said decisively.

Brennan smiled slightly. Pulling a small rectangle from her pocket, she set it on the tabletop in front of Booth before sliding out of her seat. "_Abset invidia_," she said in Latin to Booth. The card was a Jeffersonian clearance card like he'd asked for at the beginning of the Olivos case. Brennan's eyes lit up in pride for herself as Booth grinned at the pass before moving across the room to join her colleagues.

Once Brennan was joining Angela in the roomy booth, Booth looked to me. "I got the call earlier from Cullen," he told me, his voice low and slightly somber. "The Martin Davis murder investigation has been closed."

He didn't have to elaborate. In the orange-yellow lighting of the restaurant, with dark forms still swarming around and friendlily talking with peers and voices making hearing mildly difficult, I could have easily asked 'what?' and it would have been justified. The Davis investigation was closed. They had evidence linking to a perpetrator. Of course, I would still have to testify my innocence in court, and then I'd have to go through the motions of filling out FBI forms and filing disclosure forms for the Jeffersonian, limiting how much information was released to the press about my involvement, but that would come later. For the moment, I was free.

Two weeks ago, when I'd first met Booth under the murder suspicion, I'd have jumped up and down and quite possibly sang for joy for being freed from the constant supervision. I could actually go to my residence now – but not my home, because I've never had one, not really. But now, having worked with the Jeffersonian team and with Special Agent Booth for two weeks, finding and catching murderers, I was disappointed that it was all over.

I'd always known that it was going to end. That was why, during the Eller case, I'd been so focused on keeping myself apart from them. There was no 'us'; there was an 'I' and there was a 'them.' There was no 'ours'; there was a 'mine' and there was a 'theirs.' But a life with no one to go to had quickly led me to making the emotional connections despite my own conscious desires, and by the end of the Masruk case, I'd started thinking with the terms 'us' and 'ours'. It had seemed natural telling Camden and Tucker what 'my' team was doing; what 'we' were doing in regards to the investigation.

I didn't want to go. I liked the feeling of companionship. For the first time in my life, no one I'd been around had harmed me, physically or mentally, and everyone had respected me and taken my thoughts into account. They'd actually been _worried _about me when I'd chased after Farid Masruk. They'd trusted me and welcomed me, even though I was an unruly adolescent from the slums of the city. They'd treated me equally, even though they'd all gotten high education and I'd graduated high school early, gotten a full-time job, and still hadn't gone to college. They'd included me, when no one could have blamed them for ignoring me. They didn't look down on me; they didn't know my past as a 9/11 victim, they didn't know my history as an abused child, and they didn't know or see all of the scars littering my body.

But it was all a bit too fairytale, and while it's always good to dream, it's another thing to let the dreams consume you, which was what I'd let happen. These come past had been the best two weeks of my life, during which I'd lived my dream. And, as all dreams inevitably do, it was time to let this one end and go back to being a nobody with a future headed to Nowhereville, and unstable in almost every aspect of the word.

"I'm out of custody," I stated simply, translating without making him do it for me. _I don't have a place here anymore. _I looked over to Zach, Hodgins, Angela, and Brennan, then to Booth, but I quickly looked down, unable to think straight under the emotions wanting to let themselves out. _Did I ever really have a place here to begin with?_

"Of course, you'll be testifying next week," Booth said with an almost sad nod. "If I'm not out of the city, I'll be there at the trial. You're free of having me and the squints watching you every minute!" He cheered. _Are you mocking me?... No. You really think I'll be happy with never seeing any of you again. _And if I did, it would likely be on a newspaper, on the TV… maybe I'd meet someone else who reads Brennan's novels, and then I can say to someone besides myself that I'd met Dr. Temperance Brennan.

I swallowed, trying to keep my emotions in check. What good had they ever done me? They certainly weren't helping now. I hoped Booth mistook the shine in my eyes as the lights and not the beginnings of a harsh reality check. "That's… this is good!" I said, trying to sound as enthused as I could. "I can go back to my job now."

Booth's smile faded slightly. I couldn't tell if it was because he saw through the happiness or if it was for some other reason. "Thanks for all you did on the cases, kid," Booth said, and it was pretty clear that he was holding back estranged feelings too. _He's probably happy he doesn't have to deal with me anymore, but he's too sensitive to others to show it._

"It was my pleasure," I returned cordially. _More than that. Thank you for giving me the time of my life._

"The hotel room's being released," Booth informed me. "Your belongings have been packed up and are being sent back to your home." _Not mine. My legal guardians that never do anything for me and now are missing own that house. It's not my home, it never has been. _"Starting tomorrow, you'll be back to your own life." _And we'll be back to ours, without a scrawny kid to look after. _Although it hadn't been said (or even implied, for that matter), I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe that's what he was thinking.

"Thanks, Booth," I said suddenly, words tumbling. "Thanks for going to all the trouble of making sure I wasn't hurt. Thanks for tolerating me barging in on your work." _Thanks for being understanding that day outside the Jeffersonian after I'd been prepared to kill Farid, and he'd ended up being killed in my arms. Thanks for believing in me. Thanks for trusting me. Thanks for not dumping me off the moment I wasn't yours to worry about anymore. Thanks for – hell, thanks for arresting me! Thanks for changing up my life and giving me a little time to be happy. Thanks for letting me help lock up the bad ones. Thanks for letting me feel like I've done some good by identifying criminals. Thanks for – for not blaming me for not stopping Brennan from going after Thompson with alcohol in her system. Thanks for letting me feel proud of myself. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to feel important, by letting me lead more than one interrogation. Thanks for introducing me to the squints, who were all so kind to me. Thanks for acting like you cared. Thanks for giving me the chance to live my impossible dream. Thanks for even bothering to tell me in person that I don't have any business around you or our team – no. Your team. They're not mine. It's not us. It's 'them' and 'me' again. But still. Thanks for everything you did that led to this. Thanks for the ride of a lifetime. Special Agent Seeley Booth, who arrested me under murder charges, thanks for absolutely everything._


	13. A Boy in a Bush, Part One

_It was dark and dreary. I don't know where I am. My hair is sticking to my face. I reached up to brush it away, but when I did it started to float up above me. Then it's like I've opened my eyes and I can see. I'm immersed completely in water. My eyes stung from the dirty, murky substance, but I blinked against it. I can't breathe! I feel like my lungs are being squeezed. Not a comfortable feeling, I can tell you. Above me I can make out the bright reflection of light against the water's surface. I was glad I wasn't trapped. Although the water was not clear, I could tell it wasn't too far to the surface._

_I started in motion. I expected my ascent to be difficult, weighed down by my characteristic jeans and trademark long-sleeved sweater. That wasn't the case. I looked to my arms as I reached above my head to start pushing myself up to sweet, sweet oxygen. My long arms were bare, the pale skin littered with healed mutilations to my skin. Except my wrists ached and there were several ribbon-like cuts on the sides of my hands. The blood suddenly poured, tainting the dirty water red. I kicked out harder, opening my mouth to scream, but water rushed in, choking me._

_Suddenly I wasn't in the water anymore. What's going on? I can't feel my body. I can't move at all! I can't see, hear, taste, touch, or smell anything. It's like my physical being has been stripped away, but I can hear voices above me, distant, and I realize I'm lying on my back. I feel heavy, but horribly exposed and I can practically feel a soft, cold, nighttime breeze whisper through my joints._

_The voices come with sudden clarity as I can hear things being spoken. "The remains are wrapped in four-milled, flat poly-construction sheeting," an achingly familiar voice says. The sound echoes in my head. Am I suddenly hollow? No, that's impossible._

"_PVC-coated chicken wire," a young woman's voice says. I try to gasp, but I suddenly realize I can't. I am paralyzed, completely incapable of movement. But that was my voice! It was me! My voice, but I didn't say anything!_

_And then I can barely think, form coherent words to myself, let alone focus. "It's weighted. That's why the body didn't surface during decomposition. The skeleton is complete, but the skull is in fragments."_

_It hits me with startling effect. I'm dead. I'm a skeleton. But all the cuts on my body, the fresh ones spilling blood, weren't my doing. How did I get in the lake? Was I dumped? Murdered? And why can I hear myself? Am I really losing it? Well, if I'm dead, it's not so surprising._

_Everything changed again. I could feel – oh, God, I could feel such incredible, excruciating agony. I could see my own skin and body, a corporeal form again, and I never want to be a skeleton, ever. But all I can see now, while I can see, is orange and red and yellow and the blackened charring of my own flesh as I become a living barbeque meal. I'm burning alive, on fire in a world so ironically cold._

_The fire intensified around my neck. I reached up to my throat. I'm not sure why; maybe I thought I could ease the pain, but I was shocked when I felt hands grasping around my throat viciously. My eyes snapped open and I was staring straight into the venomous glare of a former "father" while his hands are tightening around my neck. I can't breathe anymore, although I daresay it's better than being unable to stop inhaling fire and fumes down into my lungs._

_And then there's a giant, gaping hole in his abdomen, and blood is spraying onto my stomach in effect as to his hit. He's taken a bullet, of a large caliber, and he's dead, falling away before my eyes. And the fire stops, washed away by the same water I was just in, but it never goes higher than my thighs. I'm sure I'll be treading water, but as long as I don't have to go back to being a decomposed body, I can tolerate it._

_Now I'm standing over the never-was-father's body. He was dead, never going to move again. The water was draining away and taking his blood with it. I knelt down, pressing my index and middle fingers against his throat, making absolutely certain that he was gone for good. No pulse. But there was a little joystick in his hand with a red trigger, and I knew that it would be a bad idea to reach for it._

_I looked back to his face. He was no longer the man I'd recognized. He was Middle-Eastern with a scarred, disfigured face. His eyes were wide open and angry, cold, calculating. The dark brown hue gave me chills. "Why did you do this to me?!" He shouted suddenly, sitting up and pressing his hands over the gaping bullet wound. The joystick rolled onto the linoleum. "I'm dead! Dead! This is your fault, you bitch! Why did you kill me?"_

_He snarled, reaching back for the joystick and lurching forwards. His arm snapped up to grab my wrist and hold me in place, tightly pressing against the tiny lacerations already there. I howled as he pressed the red trigger against my skin and a red-hot burn, like a poker stick or cigarette, started to sizzle against my flesh, and smoke rose up from my arm in a too-familiar sensation. I screeched, frantically tearing my arm away, but the little joystick had already done the damage. All across my inner arm, derogatory terms gleamed up at me, burnt in raw red across my pale skin. Although they'd heal, they'd be there for a while and hurt for every second. The terms used hurt and brought tears to my eyes. _Whore. Bitch. Useless. Slut. Parentless. Unloved. Mistake. Freak.

_I stumbled backwards, trying to escape from the monster who had branded my skin, not for the first time. I fell through the air and suddenly I was surrounded by green and brown, my arms, legs, and face being cut in sharp, stinging motions as I hurtled downwards. Green leaves slapped my face while thorns clawed at me, wanting me to stay for further abuse. Then I wasn't falling anymore; I snapped back, dangling by my head from a noose wrapped around my neck. My throat snapped backwards and my hyoid broke and pierced my carotid and jugular at once. I tried to scream out of instinct, but all I could do was choke before I fell limp, taking relief only in that if I hadn't died from the break, then I would have either suffocated or drowned in my own blood – whichever happened first._

_A Hispanic teen, maybe a year younger than me at most, dangled opposite me. His muscles were pulled taut, almost making him seem like he was smiling. He was cute, as far as my attention to that goes, but black ravens were pecking at him, trying to get something from his ear to snack on. They were already eating at patches of his skin. Okay, you know, maybe not so cute. And the raven perched on his head squawked and they all started the flock to me, covering my body in their scratchy feathers and piercing me with their sharp beaks and talons._

"_Aaaaah!" _My scream was blood-curdling as I sat bolt upright on my couch – which was also my bed. I don't live in the nicest of places. The thin blanket fell down off of me as I jolted up, clutching at my throat and gasping. I wasn't hurt, but I was terribly shaken. I forgot about my usual desire to have something covering my body in favor of pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around myself, shivering violently. It wasn't cold, but that had been one of the most horrific nightmares I'd ever had. I wished that I had some sweats, with long legs and sleeves, but those are like, twenty dollars for a set, so I've never really bothered. It's not like anyone I know is going to come running in, and anyway, if someone breaks in, I've always got my pocketknife. It had been an unlucky coincidence that I'd forgotten the trusty Swiss army knife the one day that I'd not be able to get it for two weeks, but it had a sharp blade and a couple other apparatus that made it useful.

I just sat there, shivering, for a few minutes. A look at the window told me that it was still dark out. Great. Another night without sleeping well. For the week since I've been discharged from Special Agent Seeley Booth's care, I've slept fitfully and had several nightmares. But at least I had enough time to have a small serving of cereal before work.

After my breathing had returned to normal, and I could close my eyes without seeing scenes from my vivid night terror, I slowly uncurled myself from my position and pushed myself up off of the old furniture. The cool air rushed over me as I stood up. I suppose my sensitivity to temperature is my own fault; I always cover up my injuries, so I always wear long-sleeved sweaters or long-sleeved shirts, at the very least. I've tried wearing shrugs, because they're made less thick, but the colors usually aren't as dark and they can be seen through. Besides, loose sweaters don't pull up if you have to reach for something, and the scars crisscrossing me are numerous and almost everywhere. Although not all of the ones on my back are noticeable anymore, if you look for them, you can tell where they are. Still, there are some pretty bad ones from more recently that are pretty damn obvious. So it's quite a change to go from wearing heavy clothing to shorts and a T shirt.

Still shaking off the jitters, I went through the motions of getting ready to go to work. I still hadn't gotten any contact from the legal system regarding my testimony against the actual murderer of Martin Davis, but I knew that the courts could take a while, anyway – especially since I'd help to add Ken Thompson, Tucker Pattison, and Camden Destri onto the trial queue.

I threw on my black hoodie and actually remembered my pocketknife, adding it to my jeans pocket. I tugged the sleeves of the sweater down my arms and rolled the ends slightly so there'd be more pressure and they'd be less likely to come up if I had to reach above me. I stretched out a rubber band in case I felt like tying up my hair and pushed it over my hand and onto my wrist.

I walked to the bar, like normal, stopping temporarily by the newspaper stand outside the entrance. I recognized the picture of Hanover Preparatory and couldn't resist – I really tried. _That part of your life is over, Kirkland. Get a grip. _Still, I couldn't manage to convince myself to leave the stand and walk inside. _But don't you want to know what happened as a result of your assistance in a federal case?... _Yeah, I do, a little.

_It'll hurt._

Yep, most likely.

_It's pointless to spend time longing for impossibilities._

One time! Just one!

My irrational side won out and I ended up buying the twenty-five cent newspaper. I'd probably hate myself for it later, but hey, I'd have a bit of free time. Tuesdays are always slow business for this bar. I kept the newspaper folded under my arm, refusing to let my coworkers see it. It took a moment to convert back to "coworkers" meaning Helena and Jordan and our laid-back boss, Andreas, who preferred to be called Andy. It had been so much fun… Jesus Christ. I was obsessing over something pointless to worry about. I was just wasting my energy.

I did my rounds. I was waiting tables today, while Andreas was making some land payments in the back room and Helena restocked. Jordan was outside, painting with messy, bad-quality, watery paint over childish graffiti. Like I'd said, Tuesdays were slow going. I ended up with a couple of moderately-financed teens, skipping school. They ordered some of the greasy, (quite possibly poisoned) food that we offered. Helena did everything except serve it, which I did. I also got an adult who looked pretty worse for wear, her long blonde hair frizzy and her makeup smudged. It wasn't my job to pry, so I just pretended not to notice.

I'd have to say that, out of the four of us staffing the place, I was probably the most collected. Of course, when Jordan came back to get a new pair of clean gloves, he was whining and complaining. Helena was bustling around, switching out old alcohol for the newer shipments and cleaning out burners in the outdated kitchen equipment. I didn't see Andreas. I was lazily sitting on the bar top, reading the newspaper.

**HANOVER PREPARATORY: EXCLUSIVE MURDER COURSES OFFERED?**

_Hanover Preparatory Academy, a prestigious school for the wealthy and politically-secure figures' children, has just lost their headmaster and head of security over murder charges against two of the students, Miss Camden Destri and Mr. Tucker Pattison. The victim was Nester Olivos, son of the Venezuelan ambassador. The headmaster and security leader were convicted due to lying about an official investigation to a foreign ambassador, which led to drastic measures being taken, which resulted in the assault of a ward of the federal government._

I groaned, already realizing that the press was getting their dirty paws on information about me… again! I touched my cheek subconsciously. Although the cut had healed already without a scar (which I was grateful for), it had still been just over a week ago, and I remembered the incident vividly – mostly because of the actions Booth had taken afterwards. To now, I was glad he'd restrained me. I didn't want to have hurt him or Brennan just because I'd been taken by surprise, but when I'm on defensive, I lose it a little.

_This, readers, is where our story gets a bit more interesting! This peculiar "ward of the federal government" happens to be none other than Miss Holly Kirkland, the same one who shot Senator Bethlehem's personal aid in self-defense, saving both her life and the life of renowned author Dr. Temperance Brennan. And let's not forget the incident at the Hamilton Cultural Center, where Miss Kirkland was in the process of stopping an Arabian terrorist from setting off a bomb. How was she privy to this information? We attempted to interview her on the way out, but she badgered us away with the help of her apparent protector, Special Agent Seeley Booth._

_Even more intriguing is that, although sources have confirmed damage was done to her assaulter that was excess to what she suffered, the Venezuelan officials chose not to press charges. Instead, Ambassador Olivos has expressed her gratitude and willingness to defend Miss Kirkland if she is required to make a court appearance regarding the incident._

I set the newspaper down beside me and rubbed my eyes. Great. The paparazzi weren't done with me yet. I'd been hoping I was old news by now, but apparently they didn't have anything better to do with their time than stalk a seventeen year old.

"Holly?" Andreas was at my side for the first time. "Can I talk to you?"

I concealed a sigh, pushing myself off of the tabletop and landing smoothly onto my feet. "Hey, Andy. Look, I know I was gone a while, but the FBI said they would take care of it for me. Do you need proof?" I slid the newspaper over closer to him. "There. I was with the FBI, beating up Venezuelan officials. To my defense, the rat attacked me first."

Andreas didn't bother even looking down at the paper. "That's what I wanted to talk about, Holly," he said.

Andreas was pretty laid-back. Really. He was friendly most times, and his demeanor wasn't one of superiority or threat now, but he still wasn't as happy as he normally was. Andreas was one of those sickeningly optimistic people that always look on the bright side. In a way, it's laudable, but to me, it feels like they're refusing to acknowledge factual probabilities of their situations, and it makes me want to throw up with their cheery rainbow pep talks. I mean, if everyone around me starts acting like rainbows and butterflies, I think I'd kill myself with a two-by-four.

I didn't answer directly, instead blinking at him. Andreas was used to my antisocial behavior, so he took it as the intended cue. "Holly, why were you with them in the first place?" Andreas was never one to beat around the bush, which was one of the two reasons why I'd never actually punched him in the face. I hate when people try to "break the ice" but end up just making things frustrating. "They're the government. I'm glad you felt like you were helping them, but they're not… you can't run with them. Government stooges won't help you, not in your position. Were you the one that started it? Because if so, we need to talk about the consequences of moonlighting."

I instantly tensed at the insult to my… friends, I guess. Were we really friends? "I wasn't moonlighting!" I said instantly, more worried at losing my job than defending them, although I did that promptly after. "You want to know why I was with them? They wanted me to stay with them, because I was picked up for suspicions of murder on that dead gang leader, Davis. They realized I would be high on the kill list of his cronies and so they kept me with them for my protection. I helped them because there are people that shouldn't be allowed free. And, with all due respect, Andy, it's one thing to express concern over my professional appearances, but your opinion of them in incorrect and made because of prejudice. You've never met them and you were out of line interfering in my personal affairs. Despite that I usually try to be nice to you, your face is beginning to look like a punching bag rather quickly. I advise you shut up and go away."

Andreas seemed to realize he'd prodded at the wrong place. He left me without retribution.

After the day had passed, I checked the analog clock over the wall. It was approaching eleven. I turned back to reorganize menus and such before I took my leave.

I heard the form approaching behind me. By the footsteps and speed, it was probably a tall guy with a bit of muscle. He had a confident gait. But when he stopped at the bar, I resumed what I was doing and didn't turn back. If he wanted something, he could use his words.

He cleared his throat. "Miss."

Rewarding him for using English, I turned slowly, about to wryly congratulate him on mastering speech before being thrown for a complete loop. Special Agent Seeley Booth was standing and leaning against the counter, propping himself up with his elbow and cocking an eyebrow at my first hostile, then startled expressions. "Booth!" I exclaimed, startled. "Are you arresting me again?" Although it was probably self-destructive, I couldn't help but be slightly hopeful.

Booth narrowed his eyes at me for a moment. "Nothing so glamorous," he said after a moment of scrutiny. He seemed like he was wondering what was wrong with me. "But… there is a report come in, and Bones will be there, and she's bringing the squint squad, so…"

I cocked my head at him. "I'm not selling you alcohol just because you don't like Dr. Brennan's colleagues," I said firmly.

Booth rolled his eyes. "I don't come all the way over here for alcohol," he said, sounding like his real reason for being here was so obvious, he was physically pained. "I came here to get the junior squint."

I blinked and looked behind me, then back at him and pointed at myself silently. He couldn't be serious. Booth nodded slowly at me, a grin spreading on his face.

I frowned and shook my head. This was too good to be true. And it was all wrong! I was a seventeen year old bitch from the slums. I should be here, working at a lame, unhealthy bar, not being publicly thanked by foreign political ambassadors and being extended personal invitations to work with the best science team in the world. "I'm pretty sure that's illegal now," I said, hoping the longing wasn't as obvious to Booth as it was to me. "My loophole in was through you. I have no federal ties to you now that the Davis investigation has been closed."

Booth wagged his finger at me. "I didn't say 'junior agent.' I said 'junior squint.'"

I looked down at the tabletop before looking back up. "You mean the Jeffersonian team wanted you to get me?" Booth nodded with a bright smile, practically screaming 'bingo.' I felt my resolve slipping; _if this is a dream, please don't ever let me wake up! _"Will the paperwork be sent here so I stay excused?" I asked. Booth gave me a thumbs-up, like he'd already thought through all of my possible objections. This did it. I was being extended an invitation personally through the Jeffersonian Institution and it wouldn't be detrimental to my work, other than meaning I had to be a little tight on money. I could live with that! I let the faint traces of a smile appear on my face, unable to contain it. I looked over my shoulder. "Helena! I'm taking off with the FBI. Tell Andy it's authorized!" Although Helena didn't like me, I knew she would do as I asked.

I vaulted over the countertop and landed adeptly next to Booth, sending a rogue smile to the agent. "Good! You're on board!" Booth smiled and turned, trusting me to follow him out of the bar.

_Looks like my fairytale's not quite over, after all._

* * *

><p>An hour later found me in a field behind a pretty big mall. Like most malls, it was the epitome of civilization, until you looked back behind it. There were fields with overgrown grass and shrubbery; an ideal place to hide a body for a while. However, it wasn't much of a secretive place now. It was swarming with authority vans. There was a CSI van, squad cars, a few black SUVs, and of course, the SUV Booth and I came in. The only thing that really seemed out of place was a silver car that must be thousands of dollars, but it was parked up by the CSI car like it was no big deal.<p>

"The anonymous call came in a couple hours ago," a policeman was saying. "No sign of him yet."

"How do you know it wasn't a prank?" Booth shifted, putting his hands in his jacket pockets. Although it was, like, midnight, it was pretty easy to see, considering all the lights that the police had out.

The officer fumbled for a moment with a recorder, then found the right button and a grainy, but audible tape began to play of the call. "_You have to come right away!" _A girl's voice. She was in her teenage years. She was scared, that was obvious, but something about the way her tones didn't quite match made me think maybe she had something more than adrenaline in her system. "_There's, like, a dead kid here, all rotted away! It's in the field behind Clayton Hills Mall. You better come!"_

"Sounds pretty realistic to me," I observed, shrugging. I didn't know if Brennan and Booth actually cared what I thought, but I was pretty sure they wanted me to do something. "Tonal variation can be accounted for by the typical reasons for being in a field at night; drugs, alcohol, roofies to get high. Whatever it is, the fear is real. The thing is, you have to take into account that there's something in the system that's not supposed to be. There may not really be a corpse," I said earnestly. Although I didn't want to have to go back to my reality so soon, I couldn't change the facts. "Something looked weird and a deluded mind chose that a corpse was what it would interpret."

"That could be very true, but we have to assume that it's a real kid," the police officer said, nodding to me before doing a double take. "I'm sorry – who let you in here? This is a crime scene!"

Booth stepped forward slightly. "Whoa, whoa, buddy," he said as the officer started to advance. "She's with us. And just a warning; if you touch her, she will break you."

"Not necessarily," I grumbled.

"Why anonymous?" Brennan asked suddenly.

"Kids come here to party and misbehave," the officer said by means of explanation, still casting weary looks at me now that he'd noticed me.

Brennan looked to the officer and began to explain in anthropological terms and only she and I were probably comfortable with. "Adolescents and preadolescents tend to seek out their own space to establish their own society, to counter parental influence."

The police officer crossed his arms. I recognized the gesture; it could be either hostile or defensive, but the way he started to curb his speech suggested it was leaning more towards the former, so I stepped closer to Brennan almost protectively. I'd fight for her if it came to it, although I doubted it would. "You mind if I make an observation?" The officer asked.

"No, of course not," Brennan replied, furrowing her eyebrows as if confused why he would even ask.

"In your book, the cops come off as very one-dimensional. Why is that?"

"You mean two-dimensional," Brennan corrected quickly. She wasn't avoiding the question, she was just trying to better his understanding. Although she came off as aloof, she wasn't trying to be rude.

"One-dimensionality exists only in theory as a mathematical value," came a prompt explanation from behind me. I turned around and my expression must have brightened. Zach was carrying a bag of crime scene equipment, but he'd come to stand beside Brennan loyally.

"Okay," the officer said, rolling his eyes up to the sky almost unnoticeably. "Really looking forward to your next book," he added by the wayside, almost sounding scathing as he turned to go to the coroners' van.

Brennan looked to Zach. "Did you bring the thermal imager?"

"I don't think we need it," Zach said doggedly and a bit too quickly. Brennan gave him a long look that was normally reserved for when people are trying to get them to give in. Zach's shoulders slumped. "It makes me look like the Great Gazoo," he complained.

Brennan frowned for a moment at the term, but brushed it off. "I don't know what that means, but we definitely need it, Zach." Zach sighed, his expression downcast, and turned to trudge back to the CSI van.

* * *

><p>I kept myself sort of close to Zach so that I wasn't blocking his view. I was knee-high in overgrown grasses and uncomfortably pulling at the edges of my latex gloves. I understood why wearing them was a requirement if I wanted to be part of the CSI team, but all the same, I'd had a week to get used to not having to wear them. Booth and Brennan trailed behind us. Zach wore this huge helmet-like thing. It was actually a thermal imager, not a helmet. It would detect any unusual heat signatures. If there was a dead boy here, Zach would find him quickly.<p>

"How's it going there, Darth?" Booth asked suddenly, raising his voice to be heard. "See anything on Saturn?" There was a pause, during which I rolled my eyes, and Booth's voice dropped, so I guess he was talking to Brennan. "Oh, please tell me you've seen at least one Star Wars movie."

"When I was seven," Brennan said, disapproval ringing clear. "And leave Zach alone."

"Can we please hurry up?" Zach interrupted, disgruntled. "It's stuffy in here." I ducked my head as I had to choke down a laugh. Poor Zach. "I should be able to see any heat residue released from decomposing bodies."

Zach paused a few minutes later and deeper into the field, where I suppose he picked up some unusual readings from the thermal imager. I read into his sudden hesitation and narrowed my eyes, squinting into the blackness to try and make out more details. I bent over, trying to see better. "No corpses here," I reported after carefully scrutinizing for a moment. "But it does look like there was a fire not long ago." I pointed out to some cylindrical shapes tossed down by some charred sticks. "Someone was either smoking or had drugs."

"Party central," Booth muttered.

"Because suburbs are so homogeneous, adolescents tend to rebel in predictable and uniform ways," Brennan dictated casually as Zach took my word for it and continued on. "Fire, illicit substances, wayward behavior."

"Do you think that 'wayward behavior' would include abducting a six-year-old child?" Booth deadpanned.

I slowed considerably before realizing it and had to jog for a couple of seconds to come back by Zach's side. "You didn't say we were looking for a child," I said to Booth, my voice betraying my emotions on the subject. Why a child, of all people? Children were sweet and innocent. They should be protected, not murdered and dumped in some overgrown field to be discovered by delinquents.

"I was not aware that it would affect the circumstances," Brennan replied to me, before continuing in her talk with Booth. "It's pretty extreme. Adolescents are more likely to drink alcohol and listen to culturally inappropriate music at high volume."

"Like songs about suicide, abuse, and overall violent or depressing themes?" I asked, letting my head roll back to look up at the sky for a moment.

"Yes, exactly," Brennan replied, sounding pleased that I'd understood precisely what she meant.

"Good to know," I said, not about to tell that that was a lot of the music that I listened to.

Zach stopped suddenly and at an angle in the middle of a turn. I bumped into him and jumped backwards, snapping my arms tightly to my sides and breathing heavily for a moment. God, I hated how I was so adverse to touch, even with people who expressed friendliness, but… I just couldn't help it. No friends equals no trust.

"I'm picking something up," Zach said as an explanation to his sudden halt. Zach reached up to his head and lifted the imager off, bringing it down to hold against his stomach. "Oh my God."

"What?" Booth asked, on guard. "Why'd you stop?"

"You can turn on your flashlight," Zach told me. I'd refrained from doing so because the excess light could have tricked the imager. I retrieved it from my back pocket and flipped the switch, letting the startlingly bright light illuminate the grass and Zach's shoes. "Aim it over there," the graduate said, pointing in front of us. Looking closely, I could already tell that something was there. The grass was bent and doubled over. I shone the light over and the deference was even sharper than I'd thought. I motioned with the hand not holding the flashlight at Zach to stay here and took small steps closer until I could look into the depression.

A child's body was lying on the ground, some grass stalks poking through the slender ribcage. Fusion on the innominate bones told me that the anonymous caller had been correct in her call that it was a male. Lack of complete fusion in the cranial sutures and yet the set of dentals implied that it was a child under the age of eight but older than five. He wasn't completely decomposed. Around his sternum and over the clearly-defined ribs was blackened, rotted flesh sinking inwards. The internal organs must have already drained and/or rotted away. Very little tissue remained on the skull and almost none were on the arms and legs. My breath caught in my throat as my eyes stung before I blinked the sudden tears away. "It's a kid," I said, looking up and keeping my flashlight miraculously steady on the remains. "Older than a toddler, not a preteen yet. Male. Could very well be the six-year old Booth mentioned."

Zach looked down at the ground, unhappy with this discovery. Booth looked away, not wanting to see, and Brennan's shoulders slumped slightly. Something tells me this one will pull on the heartstrings.

* * *

><p>AN: Yes, I skipped "The Man in the Bear." It was on purpose and the week that Holly wasn't with the Jeffersonian is when that took place.

Note to a review from _Sarah_: Yes, it is on Quotev, and I just want to assure you that it's not stolen or plagiarized or anything like that. I'm the one posting it on FFN, and I'm the one that posted it on Quotev. I'm only adding it to another fanfiction website because sometimes Quotev doesn't work right when I tell it to update.

And on that note, _ElysiumPhoenix_, there is quite a bit more. I currently have up to "The Woman in the Tunnel" written out and on Quotev, but I haven't gotten to the point of adding it all to FFN yet.


	14. A Boy in a Bush, Part Two

I yawned, looking discreetly sideways at Brennan's watch. It was going on two thirty in the morning. Well, that's what I get for taking a case when most people are in bed. But… it was a case. My wonderful fairytale had been extended, and how could I bring myself to say no to that?

The usually lively atmosphere was subdued greatly. While it could be excused as it being time to sleep and everyone was just tired, I had a suspicion that maybe it was more because the body on the raised platform table was one of a child. Angela was sitting in Hodgins' normal task chair, Hodgins off running some crime scene particulates through a mass spectrometer. Brennan and I stood on one side of the exam table, and Zach was standing opposite us. Brennan and I had our long-ish hair tied back in high ponytails, and I parted my overgrown fringe to either side of my face. The end result? It looks like I'd not gotten a haircut in a long time (I'm sure Angela's noticed the split ends by now), but it looked like it had been on purpose and just been a decision made in typical teenage stupidity.

Brennan inhaled and nodded very slightly, steeling herself before formally beginning the initial examination. "Before proceeding with maceration, any general observations?"

I sucked on the inside of my cheek while Zach seemed incredibly saddened by the mostly-skeletal corpse. "Epiphyseal fusion puts the age at approximately six to eight years, although the stature suggests younger."

"Good," Brennan praised, her voice heavy. I could tell that she wasn't as into it as she had been the other cases I'd assisted her with. "I concur. Cause of death?"

Zach motioned vaguely to the partially-collapsed chest cavity. "Blunt trauma to the chest."

Brennan shook her head to reorient herself, then scowled darkly down at the bones and walked around the table to her friend. "Are you alright?"

"He's so small," Angela answered in a shaky, tiny voice. "That's all." She swallowed, picking up her pencil and resuming her sketch. Angela had been working for a long time at drawing, and she had a knack for facial reconstruction. Brennan had set the tissue markers in advance so that Angela could recreate the face while we did the cursory exam. "Go on with your work. I'm okay." Angela sounded unconvincing, but Brennan didn't push, instead joining us back in the land of the morbid and depressing.

Hodgins came back, scanning his keycard quickly and taking the machine-caused action in stride. He held a clipboard at his side with results from the spectrometer, but his eyes seemed haunted. "The remains were significantly degraded by insect and animal activity, mostly dog and rodent. Despite the condition of the body, he's been dead between only thirty-six to forty-eight hours."

I pointed at the foot of the table, where the child's clothes had been neatly folded by a crime scene investigator. "Those were found a few yards away from him. Think you can try for particulates?"

"I can _try_," Hodgins said, sounding kind of skeptical. I understood why.

"Notice that they are in perfect condition," Brennan said, turning her focus away from the bones willingly. "What does that tell you?"

"The victim wasn't wearing them when he was killed," Zach said rationally, but there was a thin sigh behind the words.

"Which suggests he was sexually assaulted," Brennan finished the implication.

I pursed my lips. Did we really have to delve right into the worst case scenario? I scanned my mind quickly, trying to mull over any information I had from lectures, seminars, and online texts that might be filed away somewhere. I wished now that I had access to a computer; there's a website of official publications from a University, and all of the published works of their psychology students had been uploaded. They were really helpful; I could spend hours reading them, and once I spend almost an entire day at the library computer reading through the dissertation of another graduate. I didn't remember his name, but I only remembered that much about him because he'd graduated with his first doctorate when he'd been my age, which was a pretty impressive feat. I remember his name first made me think of candy, and then I was sulking for the rest of the day because I had none. Yeah… I read that dissertation a few years ago, when I wasn't as mature.

"Or," I added slowly, trying to scrounge up a little bit of hope that the worst kinds of psychological torture hadn't been inflicted on an innocent child. "It could mean that the murderer felt guilty and bought new clothes for him. But," I frowned, sighing, realizing that part of that didn't fit. "If it was remorse, then the body likely wouldn't have been facing upwards." God damn. So much for that.

Brennan was looking at me thoughtfully. "I wasn't aware you also had hobbies extending into soft sciences," she said. Although the words could have been taken the wrong way, I knew she was genuinely surprised and hadn't meant to insult.

I shrugged. Maybe I should keep in mind she doesn't like psychology that much.

Angela stood up from the chair slowly and smoothed her hand over her paper, turning it around so Brennan was looking at it right-side up. I leaned over slightly so I could see, too, then looked back to the monitor by the table. The bright light gave off the image of a little six year old boy, the picture pasted onto a "missing" poster. The sketch and the picture were almost identical. "I think we have a match," Brennan announced regretfully. "It's Charles Gregory Sanders."

* * *

><p>The squints and I had all taken the liberty of sleeping before Booth came to pick me up on his way to see Charles Sanders' family. The squints all took five hours to lay on their couches with throw blankets over them, while I lounged on the sofa of the secondary platform to relax and ended up dozing off.<p>

All in all, what mattered was that I'd gotten some sleep, and I bet Booth would appreciate that I wasn't as temperamental now as I might have been otherwise.

"On behalf of the FBI, we're extremely sorry for the loss of your son," Booth said somberly and lowly, mindful of the other children in the back room.

Booth and I were sitting on a couch across from two adult women. Booth was trying to seem uncomfortable, but it was obvious he liked the couch. I kept myself on edge in case I needed to run. I'm not sure why, but I'm so used to being cautious it's hard to stop. Charles' mother, Margaret, had her head down and she was sobbing helplessly while her friend, Ellie Nelson, rubbed her back and stayed for moral support.

"I have a few questions, I mean, only if you're up to it," Booth said calmly. Margaret wiped some tears away from her eyes and rubbed her cheek, nodding. "You have two other sons?" Booth started.

"Foster sons," Margaret corrected. "Though, I try not to make the distinction."

"You're failing," I said shortly. I never wanted any case involving murder to really get to me, but if this one involved children in the foster system, then I may not exactly be able to decide that for myself. "You just made the distinction to us and we didn't even question your maternity, so obviously you make the same lines to yourself, and that means that it's always obvious even to your other children that you can't forget they aren't your own. Do you have any idea how bad that must make them feel?"

Margaret's wide eyes looked down at the floor, shuddering. Ellie massaged her shoulders and glared at me. "You just told her her son has possibly been murdered, and now you're telling her about how she treats her other children? You have no clue what you're talking about!"

"Actually, yes, I do!" I retorted, getting angry. People just don't get in fights with me about foster children or the system, because I get so angry or because they know they'll lose against me. "I've been in it almost as long as I can remember, and to live with people who treat you differently just because they didn't give birth to you can be like being in a living hell, because you're essentially being told you're not good enough! You have no clue how much strain that can put on a child's mental state!" Of course, maybe it wasn't as bad if you weren't also being abused by the family…

"Margaret loves those kids like her own," Ellie argued.

"Yeah, well I'm not questioning whether or not she loves and takes care of them, am I?" I replied heatedly. "I'm saying that she's making it obvious to them that they're not her biological children, and do they really deserve to be reminded of their dead or otherwise incapacitated biological parents every day?"

"Please stop," Margaret pleaded, her shoulders shaking violently. Ellie dropped the topic in favor of giving her friend a tissue and looking back to Booth, pointedly ignoring me. "Shawn and David Cook. They're brothers. I live right next door."

"And Charles' father?" I asked, pretending that Ellie wasn't there anymore.

"We divorced shortly before Charlie was even born," Margaret said, dabbing the tissue at her reddened eyes. "He works overseas."

"He doesn't even send child support," Ellie said with a disdainful sneer at the man's mention.

I raised my eyebrow. No child support, a single mother, three children? And they ended up maintaining a house in this part of the city? Booth practically read my thoughts. "You mind if I ask how you afford this nice neighborhood?"

Margaret was pulling herself together. "Child services wouldn't allow a single mother to foster if she worked," she sniffed. "I live off the proceeds of a generous trust fund my parents set up long ago."

"And the day that Charlie disappeared, all three boys went to the park?" Booth confirmed.

"It's two blocks away. It's a very safe neighborhood," Ellie said. She was giving us information, but she wasn't happy about it. "They walk farther to school."

Margaret nodded, rubbing her eyes with the tissue again. "We all keep an eye out for each other around here. People are good neighbors and take an interest."

The door in the other room opened with a squeak. I looked away from Ellie and Margaret, sharp eyes picking up the faint movement of shadows in the kitchen. "Mom?" A boy called.

Margaret shuddered, taking in another breath and wrapping her arms around herself. "In here, Skyler," she called.

Skyler was a tall kid. He had scruffy blonde hair and couldn't have been older than sixteen. He had greenish eyes and wore a button-up and jeans. He came into the room with two kids around his ankles. I had to assume that they were Shawn and David Cook. Shawn was an adorable little thing, maybe six years old at most. His platinum hair fell slightly into his eyes and his shirt was a little too big. I narrowed my eyes. Margaret really had no idea how to treat her foster children. David was taller, and older than Shawn. His hair was a darker shade, but still blonde, and he had a rougher demeanor than the smaller brother.

Ellie looked fondly at the tallest boy. "This is my son, Skyler."

"Dad told me to bring the boys back. We've gotta go on a job," Skyler said, bored, and the boys moved out from behind him.

"There's nothing to do here," David complained.

"Our video game's broke," Shawn said sadly, looking down at the floor and rubbing the toe of his sneaker against his other foot. My eyes softened slightly. How could I be cold to the sweet, shy child?

Margaret forced herself to sit up straighter and gave the blonde brothers a watery smile. "Shawn, David, this is Agent Booth and Miss Kirkland. They're going to find out what happened to Charlie."

"How're you gonna figure it out?" David asked skeptically, crossing his arms.

"Agent Booth's in the FBI, and I'm assisting the Jeffersonian Institution's scientist. They're quite brilliant," I explained with a kind smile at Shawn. He sort of reminded me of me before I'd learned to push back, not just stumble along. "Hey, if it's alright with your mother, maybe I could help you out with your video game." I looked back to Margaret, replacing my neutral mask. She nodded thankfully and I stood up.

Ten minutes later, I was closing up the side of the Wii system with a miniature Phillips head screwdriver. "There we go," I said to myself, pleased, as the TV lit up with the "press A to continue" beginning screen as the Wii started up. I pushed the _Super Mario Smash Brothers _disc into the slot, watching as it lit up blue and the system started to read the CD.

David was watching me nervously. "And you're sure you know what you're doing?"

I smiled. The cynicism was usually considered irritating, but I knew why they felt this way and I understood so well. "Yeah. I've been fending on my own for a while. I'm pretty tech savvy."

"Cool," David said with a nod, appeased.

I sat on the opposite end of the couch than the brothers. Forcing myself on them would make me more threatening than friendly. "So," I said conversationally, making an effort to channel the gossip urges. I mean, I'm a girl, so I should have them somewhere, right? "Do you guys have girlfriends?" I asked, holding a Wii controller while the Mario game loaded.

"I do," David said, reaching up to scratch behind his ear and blushing slightly.

"Her name's Leila," Shawn sang, sticking his tongue out at his brother.

"Leila?" I raised my eyebrows and smiled at Shawn and David. "Leila's a nice name. Leila sounds pretty."

David shifted uncomfortably, a hand inching onto Shawn's leg protectively. "I thought you were going to ask us questions about Charlie," he deflected, trying to change the subject.

"Yeah," I agreed as the game flashed the Smash Bros logo. I tapped the second remote against my leg before holding it out in offering. "Which one of you puny mortals wants to challenge your legendary goddess first?"

Shawn reached out for the remote and I let him have it. "Me!" He cried, clicking the 'A' button to turn it on.

I didn't have a game system, so I had to improvise and learn as I went. The first of six Mario rounds, Shawn won against me with the blue edition of Kirby while I tried and failed to play as Captain Olimar and his Pikmin. I used to like watching my foster brother play that game when I had been in my sixth foster home. The second round, against David, had been better for me, because I'd picked up the controls pretty quickly. While David played as green-winged Link, I lost again, this time failing as Sheik. I played as a blue-winged Link in the third round against Shawn, and I beat his three ice warrior things. Against David, his Zelda won over my still blue-winged Link. The fifth round was with Shawn again and I lost to Bowser, while playing as this fox character and beating David in the sixth and final round.

While I was playing, I could literally feel the boys' eyes on me. They were suspicious and nervous to be around me. They didn't know me; I said I'd do one thing, but I did the other; I was bright and enthusiastic around them but cool to their mother; all they knew what that I was somehow involved in helping find out what happened to their brother. They had a right not to trust me, though, so I tried to act like I didn't notice. I remembered being just like them all too well. To be honest, I still feel like them when I'm around Booth, Brennan, Zach, Hodgins, and Angela.

I guess I did something right. Thirty minutes later, Super Mario was all but forgotten and Margaret, Ellie, and Booth were outside supervising us minors when David and Shawn had eagerly dragged me outside to show them their toys (and David wanted me to fix his bike). While Booth continued asking minor questions that could give insight, I had David's bicycle upside down, resting on the hot pavement on its handlebars and seat. Turned out, the gear shift hadn't been working because the chain had come off of a gear due to some thick mud. I took the entire chain off and took a sharp rock and pressed the chain against the sidewalk, showing the boys how to fix the bikes when something like this happened.

It was a simple fix, actually. The process of putting the chain back on was more complicated than actually fixing it. I stretched the chain out and found a rock with a flat bottom and showed them how to hit the rock against the chain in a way that would dislodge mud and not disfigure the metal. After that, I restrung the chain back into the gears and, so that David wouldn't be hurt if I'd overlooked something, rode down the sidewalk for a couple of wheel cycles in case anything got stuck or lurched.

After that, Margaret offered lemonade. It's never really been my favorite drink, but I had to admit, I was thirsty, and while they attended to adult business, I was practically babysitting. Forget giving me money, I'd like a drink, although I wouldn't protest to a couple dollars for being a personal fix-it woman. Then I tied up my hair with the rubber band again and joined David and Shawn back outside in the heat.

David got out Shawn's tricycle and found an extra skateboard for me while they used their bikes. Although I hadn't ever used one before, it couldn't be that hard – right? I mean, you just have to watch your balance and not actively try to face plant the ground.

I had one foot up on the sanded wood when Booth got my attention. "Are you entirely sure that's a good idea?"

I stopped, raising my hands up and giving him a 'look.' It wasn't even ten yet, and he was trying to ruin my relaxation and cute child therapy. "Booth, what do you mean this isn't a good idea?" I repeated his words back to him. "Lots of kids skateboard. I've never heard of anyone dying of skateboarding accidents."

"And you know the cause of every death, ever?" Booth said, smirking slightly.

I sighed. "Well, no, it doesn't mean it's never happened, but it means it's not common…" Booth started to open his mouth, but I stopped him. "And yes, I know, you seem to believe I attract bad luck like a moth to a flame."

Booth shrugged and gave me a helpless look. I had my foot on the back of the skateboard and pressed down so the front wheels came up, and then swung my other foot up onto the toy. I went back down to an even level suddenly and startlingly, lurching forwards, but reeled backwards, stabilizing myself before rocking my weight back and forth. Finally, I re-centered my feet and dropped one to the ground, pushing off and coasting down the slight decline of the driveway.

I really should have figured out how to stop before I started.

When I got to the sidewalk, I started to realize I had no clue how to break, and then the skateboard went over the curb. The front wheels caught and I was sent tumbling down into the street, catching myself on my elbows. "Ow!" I shouted, mostly just for complaining's sake. I had to censor myself, and remembered just in time. "What the he – heck! That hurt!"

"Can't say I didn't warn you," Booth called as I got up, retrieved the skateboard, and brushed myself off.

"Yes, I know you told me so!"

* * *

><p>"Alright, I give," I said, shaking my head and sighing at the littler kids. "You beat me. To the street. Literally, if you want to count the skateboard thing."<p>

David scoffed. For being younger than me, he sure was audacious. Not that I really had room to speak. "No wonder you don't have a boyfriend."

"David!" Margaret gasped, her face coloring in embarrassment.

I frowned, saving face. "It's okay, Mrs. Sanders. No, David, actually I do have a boyfriend," I lied through my teeth, but maybe David would feel more inclined to trust me and answer truthfully if he thought I could relate to him.

"Is he pretty?" Shawn asked timidly.

I snickered, thinking of every guy I'd ever met. "I don't think he'd like to be called that." I looked to David, making sure my expression was clear. The guarded expression worked with adults, but not with children who had experience being lied to, mistreated, and double-crossed. "So, speaking of romances, was Leila with you the day that Charlie disappeared?"

"Uh, yeah, actually," David said, rubbing his neck as he recalled the day. "We stopped and played some video games at the arcade."

"Oh," I said. "Cool. I love arcades." Lying. I've never been to one. "That must have been before you and Charlie went to the park."

Margaret's expression suddenly broke. "You didn't go to the mall that day, David," she stated, her voice gaining a tremor. She looked at David, but her son looked away, unwilling to look at her in the eyes. "Shawn?"

"Don't ask Shawn, mom," David immediately stopped her. _He's protecting the only biological family he has. He knows Margaret can't help but make a distinction, so the need to fend people away from his brother is even stronger._

"You met Leila at the mall, didn't you?" I pushed lightly, but tried to sound understanding. "You left Charlie with Shawn at the park."

"Well, just for a few minutes," David confessed. "But then they came right back to the mall."

"David!" Margaret sobbed dryly.

"Shawn let go of his hand for a second, and Charlie was gone, like that!" David, distressed at being found out, snapped his fingers for emphasis. Across the street, a car engine started as Skyler and Ellie's husband began loading up some supplies to go on what I think is an extermination mission to eliminate pests from peoples' houses. "And then we came straight home."

"That's why our lead didn't go anywhere," I told Booth, feeling relieved. I mean, it would have been one thing if the whole case went cold. I mean, now things would be older, but at least we had more methods, more strings, more opportunities and means of catching a child's murderer. "He wasn't taken from the park, he was taken from the mall. We've been searching the wrong location."

* * *

><p>Brennan's office was filled with the squints and myself, along with Dr. Goodman, who was handing around slips of cardstock paper. "These are invitations to a banquet," he explained, handing one to Brennan.<p>

Brennan looked at it for a moment before looking up. "You called a special meeting to invite us to a party?"

"Don't think of this as an invitation," Dr. Goodman warned lightly. "Consider it a summons. It's for donors."

"Oh, yay," I said as I ended up getting one, too. "Meet, greet, be annoyed, have anger management training from an official, bureau-appointed psychologist after breaking someone. Sounds like heaven," I finished wryly.

"I don't like it any more than you do," Dr. Goodman ceded. "But these people fund our research, and all they want in return is to rub elbows with a scientist every once in a while."

I rolled my eyes. "Firstly, I'm not a scientist, so why do I have to go? And secondly, if anyone tries to touch me, donors be damned, I'll flip them over my shoulder and onto the floor."

"Of course you will, Xena," Hodgins said, smirking slightly.

"My name is not Xena."

"Then why do you fight all the time?"

"Why do you like picking arguments with government figures? Do you want me to call you a nickname derived from a government-hating criminal?"

"Xena wasn't a criminal."

"You're right. You're not calling me a criminal, you're calling me a princess. That's even worse. I'm going easy on you."

Dr. Goodman pretended not to hear us, probably because he didn't want to rebuke a seventeen year old for acting like an adolescent. Instead, he held a 'summons' out to Angela, who waved one hand at him in an apologetic way. "I have a date that night."

Dr. Goodman gave her a look. "You don't even know when it is." Angela sighed.

Hodgins didn't even look down at the paper before saying, "I can't make it."

"Yeah, me neither," Brennan agreed.

Zach raised his hand timidly, flipping the card over to see if there was any information on the back. "Yes, Mr. Addy?" Dr. Goodman asked.

"What kind of food will there be?"

Dr. Goodman looked down at the floor, praying for patience and clasped his hands, looking back up with a peacekeeping expression on. "When I said you should think of this invitation as a summons, I understated. It's a subpoena. A grand jury subpoena. Ignore it at your own peril," he rephrased.

Brennan scoffed unsurely. "You're not going to fire us if we don't go."

Dr. Goodman smiled and I resisted the urge to start laughing. That expression so totally screamed blackmail and manipulation. "No, not fire you, but I can move your parking spot to Lot M. Enjoy the shuttle ride."

Zach looked at Dr. Goodman with wide puppy dog eyes. "The shuttle smells like feet."

Brennan sighed and tossed the card to her desk, where it landed over some paperwork on a limbo case. "I know when I'm beat. I'm in."

"What the hell, it's a party," Angela tried to be optimistic.

"Do I have to wear a tie?" Zach asked, a little cloud of depression forming above him.

"Formal wear. I've arranged for a limo to pick us up here."

I jumped, drawing my hands in across each other and then reversing, saying 'no.' "Hey, hey, hey! You never said why I had to attend!"

Dr. Goodman gave a small (almost apologetic?) smile to me. "Haven't you heard? You've been in the news sporadically for two weeks. You're famous."

"More like notorious," I grumbled. "I'm not wearing a freakin' dress." I couldn't argue with it. I mean… I just, this guy could stop letting Brennan take me on as a consultant, and this hobby beat all of my others by miles.

"Not me," Hodgins said, defiantly and smugly. "I'm not afraid of parking _or _feet."

"Wait, you drive me to work," Zach said slowly, pointing. "You can't just think of yourself."

"Repercussions and consequences, Dr. Hodgins," Dr. Goodman said gravely. "I'm your boss, and you will go to this banquet."

Hodgins glared fireballs at the archaeologist's back, reaching to his wrist, pulling back a band, and letting the rubber snap back to sting his wrist.

* * *

><p>"Are you about to clean the bones?" I asked, holding the door slightly ajar and peeking into Zach's work space.<p>

"Yes," he said distantly. "I'm warming up the boiler now."

I tilted my head and opened the door further, stepping through and pushing it closed behind me. "Is something wrong?" I asked, taking in Zach's upset countenance. He seemed visibly deflated.

Zach looked down at the bones of Charles Sanders, his expression grim. "These are the smallest remains I've ever worked on."

"That's a valid reason to be upset," I said softly, remembering the tug of anger and sorrow that had been plaguing me since discovering the body in the field. "It's good to compartmentalize, but it's also good to feel. There's no point to being an anthropologist if you don't have compassion for it and the victims."

"So you think I'll get used to it?" Zach looked up at me questioningly. I couldn't tell whether he seemed hopeful or worried.

I blinked several times before settling on something. "No. I hope you never do. How could anyone look at a child who was murdered and not even be a little bit sad? They'd have to be a psychopath." _How could anyone have looked at a child and decided that everything that they didn't like was directly their fault? That it was okay to strangle and hit and beat and burn the child, and that chaining them to furniture or locking them up was a good substitute for a five-minute time out? _"As a primate-evolved species, humans are very social creatures. It's an instinctual habit to protect the youth of society, even from each other, if need be."

"So I'm always going to feel terrible?" _God damn it, Zach, why won't you take the offered optimism before I get depressed enough to entertain thoughts of shooting myself?!_

I took a very deep breath. "Zach, I'm really trying here," I said, the emotional power that had been in my voice draining slightly. "I'm really, really trying, because feelings are not my strong suit, but you've got to take something and focus on that so that you don't dwell on what happened to the kid."

"Details," Zach nodded to himself. "Yeah, I can do that." He walked over to where the skeleton was laid out on a white, sterilized table. "No trauma to the skull, no compound fractures. Charlie was not beaten to death or dismembered." _Good, maybe it was quick. _"Greenstick fractures on ribs four, five, six, and seven, and the sternum is snapped transversally from the tip to the xiphoid."

"Okay, so, bludgeoned to death?" I surmised. _Okay, maybe not so quick. _"Blunt-force trauma."

"I've been over everything at least three times. There's nothing more we can learn from the body at this stage of decomposition," Zach said raptly.

I frowned down at the remains of a little boy. Okay… is something missing? He went to the mall with his brothers and met up with his brother's girlfriend in the arcade. Shawn let go of his hand for a moment, and he left immediately. It was a premeditated decision to leave. So either he saw someone he knew, or he wanted to leave the arcade. A little boy of six years old might be overwhelmed by lights and noise and crowds. If he was going to see someone he knew well, like Margaret or Ellie, then he'd likely have tried to tell David and Shawn in hopes that they could tell the other boys to go to the park. So if he left of his own will, then he would have been alone. Someone got close to him, someone who maybe did something that made him suspicious. He tried to run. So they stopped him… how do you stop a child from crying and screaming and making a scene?

I looked up and down the body, scrutinizing the details. You bribe them. Chances are, if it was a sex-motivated crime, then the damn pedophile drugged Charles. It's sickening how many nut cases get off on sex when it's not completely consensual. Besides, a little bribery wouldn't stop a scared child from wanting his family for two entire weeks.

"Zach, before you clean the bones, please take samples from the mouth, jaw, sinuses, and… whatever's left of the esophagus." My voice became quieter at the end. "Sanders might have been drugged in order to keep him incapable of fighting back or drawing attention."

* * *

><p>"There are twenty surveillance cameras taking stills every two seconds throughout the mall, including access corridors and parking lots. I concentrated on the ones aimed at the public concourse," Angela explained, setting a video to play on mute.<p>

Booth had his hand slightly covering his mouth as he watched Angela's computer run through codes. "Okay, ten thousand people a day go through that mall. How are we going to find one small kid?"

"Angela designed a mass recognition program to apply body types to skeletal remains," Brennan answered promptly with a proud glance at her friend.

Angela smiled slightly to herself as she started the scan. Up in the top corner, little red letters flashed as near-translucent, thin, intersecting red lines moved across the screen, sizing up anything that resembled the recognition Angela had inputted. "Endomorph, ectomorph, mesomorph – that sort of thing. I modified it to scan two-dimensional images. In this case, we're looking for body masses roughly congruent with Charlie, Shawn, and David."

The little red box fixated on a figure and the computer beeped. A minute later, the tape froze and then started again, but this time a picture of the camera monitor with the figure isolated was up in the top right corner. I pointed, recognizing it. "There's David." He was wearing the same rosary that he'd worn when I'd seen him this morning.

"You're actually one of them," Booth said, leaning back away from Angela and yet watching her in fascinated horror – sort of like you'd watch a plane crash or a train wreck, if you were too stupid to get yourself together and call 9-1-1.

"One of who?" Angela asked, laughing in bemusement at the FBI agent's expression.

"A squint!" He cried like it was obvious. "I mean, you _look _normal, and you _act _normal, but you're actually one of _them!_" I rolled my eyes. He's just so considerate.

Angela shook her head, denying it. "The whole mass recognition program was Brennan's idea. I'm _completely _normal, really. I swear."

"Yeah, maybe before you got this job. But now-"

Booth was interrupted by Brennan. "I see Charlie!" She quickly zoomed in and set the computer to follow him.

"Oh. That's him, alright." Booth shoved his fists in his pockets, his jacket forced back to his sides.

"Oh, God." Angela was deathly pale.

"Ange?" Brennan started, reaching out to touch her friend's arm. "Are you okay?"

Angela looked depressed and her eyes glistened like she was fighting back tears. She changed how she held her touch pad and pressed it against herself, her arms hugging it to her. "It's just… these are probably the last pictures of this little guy alive. Why is he alone? Why isn't anybody with him?" She demanded, emotional overload making her lash out. She realized this when Brennan cringed away slightly at the sudden raise of her voice. "Sorry…" she forced herself to calm down. "Maximum resolution is X-40 by 480 pixels per square inch."

On the screen, the boy was looking up at something. As he shoved his way through the crowd as quickly as possible, his eyes never left it. I looked to the other side of the screen. Maybe if he was doing his own window-shopping, we could find which store he'd last gone too. Maybe the culprit was an employee of – I don't know, _The Gap _or _Toys R Us._ But no… he was looking at and going to one place that wasn't a store. It was by the front of a hallway that led towards an exit where security cameras no longer covered the area. At first I just saw the display board, propped up on a set of wheels. Then I saw the sneakers, just barely visible. "He's not alone!"

"Someone's calling him over," Booth agreed. "Can't you just zoom in?"

"The fewer pixels that make up an image, the more the picture degrades once we zoom in on it." Angela explained, only increasing the zoom by ten percent. The paused screen was still interpretable, but outlines were now a little fuzzy. "Did that sound too squinty?"

"Is there any way to enhance it?" Brennan asked.

Angela looked between her touch panel and the monitor, her eyes going briefly to her laptop on the coffee table. "Well, I wouldn't bet a date with Colin Farrell on it."

"I know him!" Brennan exclaimed, pleased with herself. "He's funny!"

Angela's lips quirked. "Funny is Will Ferrell, sweetie. Hot is Colin Farrell."

Booth looked at me, trying to convey exasperation, but I shrugged. Just because I was getting along with him now didn't mean that I was going to take his side when, in some ways, I was as socially inept as Brennan. Booth sighed and looked back to the screen. "This kid was definitely moving toward someone. He wasn't struggling. He wasn't trying to get away."

"I think we should add Ellie Nelson and her son Skyler to suspect lists," I said slowly. "It had to have been someone Charles had seen often before." While everyone else was calling the child by his nickname, I adamantly refused. I knew that if I got any more emotionally connected than I already was, then I wouldn't be completely objective.

"I have one other angle, but our bad guy is still obstructed in it," Angela deemed, bringing another camera's freeze-frame up beside the first.

I growled back in my throat. "Who the hell are you, you twisted son of a bitch?"

* * *

><p>AN: Note to _ElysiumPhoenix_: Firstly, I just have to say, I love your penname. Secondly, more about Holly's history comes out through the chapters, and as things get more complicated for her, eventually things will start coming out to the others.


	15. A Boy in a Bush, Part Three

Brennan seemed unusually quiet as she led Booth and I to Zach's work space. "What's eating you, Dr. Brennan?" I quipped, quickening my pace to come up to her side.

"I'm afraid Angela might quit," Brennan confided, her voice soft and sad as her eyes kept down to the floor.

Booth snorted. "I'm amazed she stuck it out this long."

"Why?" Brennan asked, giving him a confused look of bewilderment.

"Oh, because she's human."

Brennan and I both stopped in our tracks, turning slightly to give Booth warning looks. Booth put his hands up above his head. "I'm sorry, Bones! It's just that, you know, Angela didn't get the same training that the rest of you got on planet Vulcan."

"I don't know what that means," Brennan said promptly, turning on her heel and starting to walk again.

Booth sighed as we fell in step with Brennan, ending our trek in an exam room. Zach was already there, going over the skeleton. "She's more sensitive," Booth finally rephrased.

"Who's more sensitive?" Zach asked. He didn't look up, staying bent over the child's skeleton as he carefully reviewed his data for anything that might clue us in to another lead in the case.

"Angela," Brennan huffed, affronted by Booth's assessment.

Booth held up his hands helplessly. "What? She likes puppies and kitties and ducklings, and Jell-O shots and, you know – dancing on bars!" Booth whistled a tune (I think it was from _The King and I – _that musical about the governess and the King of Siam) and did a foolish, thankfully quick jive.

"I know that," Brennan replied snappishly, sending Booth a cold look. "She's my best friend. Angela's not the only person in the world who likes baby animals."

I smiled slightly, probably taking on a slightly dreamy expression. "I love little animals. Puppies, kitties, and ducklings are some of my favorites because they're just so huggable."

"I never got the big attraction," Zach disagreed.

Booth gestured grandly at the grad student. "I rest my case. She's more sensitive."

Zach took a step back from the table and moved his hands to his sides calmly. "We cross-referenced the length and density of Charlie's leg bones with other children his age." Zach paused before correcting himself. "The victim, I mean." Booth crossed his arms defensively over his chest, staying still and gazing down at the skeleton, looking both angry and anxious at the same time. _Does he… does Booth have a kid? I never asked… _Zach noticed the odd expression. "The thing to do is concentrate on the details."

Booth nodded, forcing his eyes up to Zach and away from Charles' remains. "Let's do that," he agreed, clearing his throat with a cough.

"We found some abnormalities," Brennan began to go into detail about the oddities we'd found. It was hard to bring myself to look at the skeleton, but for an hour I'd forced myself to. The Jeffersonian had brilliant scientists, and they wouldn't have a reason to have me around if I was too touchy to make clinical observations. "They're bowed, and abnormally short."

"Also, the victim shows freezing of the joints at the hip and knee." Zach gestured to the body as he talked, his hands hovering over the small, barren corpse.

Booth didn't respond for a few seconds, blinking several times as though he was running this through a mental makeshift translation program. "Are you saying Charlie was crippled?" He asked after a minute. I nearly laughed; it took him that long to figure it out, and then he still had to ask.

"Disabled, yeah," I said instead of giving in to the humor. "Not crippled. Not the way society thinks of it, anyway."

"His mother never mentioned that," Booth said, unsettled.

Zach started, leaning further forwards to let his hands float above the sternum and ribcage. "The ribs are broken in two places, which is not typical of blunt-force trauma. I attribute it to his medical condition and the brittleness of his bones."

"I agree. What is that condition?" I'd found that Brennan liked to play trivia with Zach to keep him attentive and to prove to her that he was benefitting from the internship.

Not at all out of practice, Zach didn't even blink. "It looks like scoliosis – a bend in the spine."

I spared a look over to the x-rays pinned to a bright white board on the far wall, but tried not to let my doubt show. I mean, obviously Zach has more expertise than I do, so it would be rude to correct him, but still, there were an awful lot of abnormalities for just simple scoliosis.

Luckily for me, I didn't have to bring it up. "I think it's more than that, Zach," Brennan said. Fortunately, her tone wasn't sharp or calculating, which meant that she probably wasn't blaming her intern for being incorrect. "There are multiple calcified lesions on the posterior thoracic vertebrae. That, plus Charlie's short stature and the asymmetric length of his legs, Margaret Sanders may not be Charlie's biological mother."

"What?" Booth's voice was so loud it could have been considered a yell.

I snorted. "Figures. She did love her son, but she made the kinship distinction for her own ethics, not for her consciousness."

Brennan took a slight step back and nodded to Zach. "Test the bones for X-linked hypophosphatemia and Coffin-Lowry syndrome."

Zach nodded in acceptance and started to move to the table to get some swabs and Petri dishes, but Booth flailed his arms desperately. "Whoa, whoa, hold on, press pause, simmer down – just back up to the part where she's not his mother."

While I had to admit that watching him flail was better than most of the reality sitcoms I'd seen on the bar TVs, I took it upon myself to straighten it out before he pulled a muscle or something. "Dr. Brennan and Zach are checking for hereditary defects that are always passed to a child from the biological mother. If Charles Sanders had one, then Margaret lied about being his blood mother."

* * *

><p>Margaret choked on the air, a hand flying up to her throat in a fit. "How can you say that!"<p>

"Charlie suffered from a hereditary genetic disorder called hypophosphatemia," Brennan repeated to the distraught woman. "Charlie's real mother would have the same disease, although you do not."

Margaret's chest heaved as she inhaled through her own shock at being found out. She hit the side of her fist weakly against the table. "Never say I wasn't Charlie's real mother, because I was!"

"Biological mother, then," I corrected, rolling my eyes and waving my hand so that she knew I was only agreeing with her to get what I wanted. I had no respect for her at the moment - not as a parent, anyway. Shawn and David knew she loved them, but she lied to children. Children in the foster system, no less, and when you're a naïve adolescent in the foster system, all you ever really want is to know where you belong and what you did that made you not worth your biological parents' time and love. She lied to Charles about his identity and alienated the other children entrusted to her. "You lied to us through your teeth about your relationship to a child, a victim of murder, the murder of whom we are investigating. If we had not run tests, then we may have overlooked the one lead in this case that could actually go anywhere! Would you like to explain that to Dr. Brennan and I?"

Margaret, in her stress, hadn't been getting a lot of sleep and she hadn't been getting all the nutrients she needed, either. I knew from looking at her that it wasn't because of finances; it was simply lack of trying to keep up with herself. Yeah, I don't get maybe as much nourishment as I should on a regular basis, but I don't look sickly. Margaret's eyes were beginning to look bloodshot and she had dark circles under her eyes. Lines on her forehead were pronounced and her clothes had several creases, like she'd washed them but then hung them up to dry or skipped over the ironing process. There was a buildup of oils in her hair - some oils make hair nice and shiny and smooth, but she hadn't washed out the excess.

Now it all seemed to build up into enough pressure to break the dam barricading the truth. With a deep, shuddering breath, Margaret quietly spoke. "I can't have children. That's why my husband left me. So, I took in foster kids."

"Like Shawn and David Cook." Brennan nodded, following along.

"And Charlie," Margaret quickly added, before her volume dropped again. "Though, his name was Nathan. I got him as a baby down in Pittsburgh, ten days old. His mother was arrested on drug charges and Child Services brought him to me. I had him for three weeks. Then the charges were dropped."

"You kept him?" Brennan asked.

"No." Margaret's answer was firm, the first completely solid word she'd given in the whole time we'd been interrogating her. "I gave him back, even though it nearly killed me. I stayed in touch. I bought him things – formula, a stroller, because I wanted to make sure he was alright."

I sent a short glance at the opaque, rectangular depression in the wall. On the other side of the one-way mirror, Booth would be monitoring the conversation, and when we were done here, he could cross check the story. "What was his surname?"

"Nathan Downey." This brought my attention back to the foster mother. The lack of hesitation in the answer, yet the immediate recall suggested that she was guilty and she knew she'd been wrong in taking back the child, but also that she was confident she'd made the best decision she could. "His mother was a drug addict named Janine. Christmas day, I found her dead on her kitchen floor with a needle stuck in her arm. And I could hear Charlie, crying upstairs, so I went up."

"And you took him home," Brennan finished.

"I looked him in the eyes, and I promised him I would never leave him alone again." Margaret's eyes were watery and tear tracks led down her face from her reddening eyes. She drew a shaky, gasping breath. "And he stopped crying! I expected every day for Child Services to come looking. They never did."

"He would have ended up back in the system, anyway," Brennan said softly, her eyes loosing focus for a moment. I filed this for later thought; she must have experienced the system, too.

"I meant to keep him safe!" Margaret suddenly cried, her tone heart-wrenching. She pitched forward, covering her eyes with her hands and letting her sobs jerk her shoulders. "And love him!"

_You didn't do a very good job of protecting him, _I thought to myself.

Margaret's bawling intensified and her head slid down the length of her arms to touch the table, her fingers interlocking around her neck. Brennan looked up at me with a confused, 'what-was-that-for' expression.

I blinked once before flinching. "Oh, damn. Did I say that out loud?"

* * *

><p>"I had to arrest her," Booth said for the third time. He was haggard and weary, and as he entered the office he fisted his black jacket before tossing it haphazardly over the back of a chair.<p>

"The story checked out! The overdose!" Brennan protested. I was right behind her; although my reasoning was slightly different, our desires were the same. I'd noticed that when Brennan got worked up, her voice went up and squeaked slightly. It was funny to listen to, although it was so common in people that it wasn't funny enough to laugh out loud about.

"She confessed to kidnapping," Booth said, his jaw firm in his resolution.

"Margaret Sanders did nothing more than respond to the anthropological imperative – she saw an orphan and she reacted!" Brennan fervently argued, her hands balling into fists and her arms rigid at her sides.

Booth twitched. "This is not a National Geographic study, okay? This is the suburbs!"

"Why would she kill the boy?" I demanded. I crossed my arms, unlike Brennan, but dug my heel into the short bristles of the carpet. "She obviously loved him, despite the legal and ethical conflicts!"

Booth rotated so he was facing us, merely the desk keeping him relatively safe from Brennan's wrath and my cutting glare. "There are situations, right?" No matter how many variations of his explanation he gave, I refused to let it be. How could I? Not when Shawn and David were going to go back into what real hell feels like. "The kid gets sick, he doesn't turn out to be what she wanted. I bet that you could give me a dozen examples of societies that have killed their own young."

"That argument is inapplicable," I shot down his words. "Other societies don't matter. This society, the culture of modern-day Washington D.C. is what matters, and we sure as hell don't kill children just because they knock over their glass of orange juice or scatter toys across the floor. Margaret Sanders swore to protect that little boy and she's positively heartbroken that now he's dead. He was murdered, most likely by someone he trusted. It's bad enough that Shawn and David have lost their brother, now you're taking away not just their mother, but their life and home and you're shoving them back into a living hell!" My voice rose shamelessly as I began to get worked up about it. "You have no idea how bad the system is!"

"Well what do you want to do, hmm?" Booth challenged abruptly, his demeanor instantaneously reverting to snappish and defensive. "Do you want to kidnap them the way that she kidnapped Charlie?"

"No!" Brennan exclaimed, incensed. Oh, there's the little squeak again. "I want you to let them go home to Margaret Sanders!"

"It's not going to happen!"

* * *

><p>Upset with the lack of results our antagonizing got, Brennan drove back to the lab, going into her office to cool down. Free to roam now that there wasn't a target possibly nailed on my back, I spent some twenty minutes wandering through the Paleontology exhibit while snacking on some fifty-cent chips from the vending machine. I think I saw Naomi giving a tour to an elderly couple, a news reporter, a tween who was probably doing a research report, and a girl who filed her nails while her nerdy boyfriend absorbed everything that passed out of Naomi's mouth. Well, not really the words; I mean, he was paying really close attention to Naomi, if you get my drift. Which makes him not only a lousy boyfriend, but also on my hit list. Sometimes when I get angry I imagine I have this whole village in my head and I torture the citizens ruthlessly until I feel better. That guy is going in the village, since he was ogling my friend's girlfriend. Well… sort-of-girlfriend, anyway.<p>

After that, I got bored with the fossils and excavated materials and went back to the Medico-Legal lab. Although I was no longer under watch and had no particularly good reason to be there, the guards recognized me and let me into the lab. After standing around by the empty raised platform, I heard Angela's voice drift from her office and went up there.

"Try re-digitizing and resizing," Zach suggested. He was bent over slightly, looking at the monitor from over Angela's shoulder as she sat at her task chair.

"I did," Angela sighed, swiping rapidly at some hair that fell down by her face. "The extrapolation protocol got confused by the spread. Hey, you know Hodgins better than anybody else. So, why is he so bent out of shape about this banquet?"

"What makes you say that?"

Angela lifted her flashy red nails from the keyboard, taking the opportunity to rest her hands a moment. "Because every time someone mentions it, he starts snapping that rubber band around his wrist."

"No," Zach corrected. "I meant, what makes you think I know Hodgins better than anyone else?"

"You're roommates," Angela reminded him.

Zach paused for a moment, like he was deciding whether or not Angela's last statement had been completely serious or a joke. "I live above his garage."

"But you see a lot of each other."

"Not really."

"He drives you to work."

"I've never been up to the main house."

I raised my eyebrows, leaning against the door frame. Even though they weren't looking at me, I extended a hand to Zach. _Go on._ "The main house?" Angela repeated incredulously, swiveling her chair to see the graduate.

"It's at the opposite end of the driveway, on the other side of the tennis courts, across from the pond."

My jaw dropped for a few seconds before I realized it and closed my mouth. My surprise melted away when I recalled one of my first thoughts about Hodgins. So the surname wasn't just coincidence. "Anything on the identity of Sanders' abductor?" I asked loudly, announcing my presence. Zach blinked and Angela's form jumped slightly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

Angela shook her head slowly. "I can't clear up this image any more than it is." She looked at Zach. "Tell Holly what you told me about living in Hodgins' garage."

"What's so fascinating about Hodgins' garage?" I turned my head to look at Booth, who had come up behind me. My attentive habits were slipping as the lab became more familiar to me. I'd give myself a mental lecture later. Booth mimicked my position, propping himself up against the doorframe with his lower arm.

Zach frowned slightly. "There's a bedroom, living room, kitchen, another bedroom, a den, two bathrooms-"

"Great," Booth interrupted, dismissing the younger male's recount. "Quite a garage. Now can we focus on the case?"

Angela ignored Booth. "How many cars does he have in that garage?"

"Including the antique ones?" Angela nodded. "About twelve. And a boat," Zach added as an afterthought.

Angela looked back at Booth and jerked her thumb at Zach, arching her eyebrows and lowering her chin slightly. "Zach has never seen the main house, because the tennis courts and the pond block the view."

I crossed my arms. "So he really is one of _those _Hodginses."

Zach looked to me and frowned, pursing his lips slightly as he tried to figure out what I meant. "Who are 'those' Hodginses?"

"You know, the Cantilever Foundation Hodginses?" I reiterated with a smirk. How was it that even his best friend didn't know that he was filthy rich because of a family organization, and that, as a result, he was practically everyone's boss?

"Oh my God," Angela gasped.

"The same Cantilever Group that generates more G.N.P. than Europe? That's the one we're talking about, right?" Booth clarified quickly, trying not to get left behind again.

"Single biggest donors to the Jeffersonian," I said with a self-satisfied nod. Everyone's shock was appropriate and amusing.

Booth started laughing as he smiled. He pointed at Angela with a ridiculous glint in his eyes. "That makes Hodgins your boss!"

Angela exhaled, licking her lips and re-adjusting her hair again. "What do you guys even talk about when he drives you to work?"

Zach shrugged slightly, looking chastened, like Angela was mad he hadn't told her about Hodgins' wealth before now. "I mostly sleep. Hodgins mostly yells at the radio."

The captivation of the conversation wore off of Booth and the agent refocused on the loop video on Angela's computer. Booth snapped his fingers for attention and pointed at the monitor. "If you can't see the guy's face, maybe you can grab a reflection."

I did a quick once-over of the image. Glass doors of the mall, shop windows, shining tiles reflecting light, and of course, that businessman's glasses… there were several reflective surfaces, all at various angles of Charles Sanders and the secret kidnapper. It could work. If several separate images could be drawn from those locations corresponding with the angles from the figure, then a computer could input those reflections and logically fill in the gaps. The results could either be way off, or close enough to get a hit. Either way, it wouldn't take long and was worth a try.

Angela tilted her head as she settled her fingers back on the keyboard, biting her tongue slightly as she set to work with a program analysis of the video frames. Zach looked from the computer to Booth in astonishment. "That's a workable idea," he concluded, still shocked.

Booth shoved his hands in his pockets, looking uncertainly from Zach, to Angela, and to the monitor again. He didn't even bother looking to me, as it was pretty obvious by my muffled snickers that I was trying not to laugh at the sheer dumbstruck emotions the others clearly displayed at Booth's sudden progress. Booth frowned nervously. "Well, I'd say thanks… you know, if you didn't say it like it was some kind of a miracle."

* * *

><p>Booth went to get Brennan and Zach to collect Hodgins while Angela gathered the image up. Angela leaned forwards in her seat, attentive to the job. "Alright, so you point out some surfaces – preferably flat – that could give a reflection of the kidnapper's face, and I'll be able to digitize and repolarize the collective images while the computer interprets the reconstructive markers and fills in the spaces."<p>

I blinked once, taking the information in stride. Find reflective surfaces, point them out, let her do the rest, and then try to remember if I've seen the resulting image. Simple enough. I pointed at the monitor over Angela's shoulder at several locations. "Right there, the glass doors, then the floor-" I motioned to some tile that shone under the light fixtures. Light could easily reflect down there and it was at a corresponding angle with the abductor's face. "And then, what about that man's glasses?"

Angela found the frames' coordinates and set red boxes around them, then set them to scan and enhance. Then the frame shrank to one side of the screen and the enhanced pictures of the blurry reflections were moved to the black half of the monitor, which quickly lit up white. I watched, entertained, as the pieces fit together. The program took the composites and created a virtual mold, then matched the depths and realigned the fragmented pictures with the outline. The computer then logically filled in the spaces with the same skin tone and edited to paste the whole thing together seamlessly.

The portrait itself was still just a little blurry. Angela realized this and set out on a quest to explain. "By polarizing the image, the computer can interpret the spaces between the white and the dark gaps and fill in the missing pieces."

The contrasts evened out so they were no longer even noticeable. What remained was a splotchy recreation of the abductor's face. I could tell right away that they were an adolescent. "That doesn't look like an adult." The jawline wasn't defined and the cheeks were round with the normal baby fat of a child. Now, there's a line between how I classify adults and children.

While technically, I'm still a minor, physically I'm about as grown up as I'm going to get (maybe I'll get taller, but I'm already pretty tall so it's all good with me if I don't). While there are the changes in looks that someone would get with age, I could pass off being eighteen or nineteen. Maybe even twenty. I don't have any baby fat left and, while my bones aren't as well defined as a male's, they're still more prominent than in a child. The skeletal sutures and bone fusion have all completed as much as they need to be to be comparable to a legal adult's. With children, though, there's so much development yet to be had that it doesn't even matter what the law says. They're obviously children, without having had the years of muscle endurance or calorie burning to grow out of the adolescent image.

Angela nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. "No, it doesn't. Here – when I repolarize the image…" she trailed off, acting on her own suggestion and running the computer.

The photograph came clear, the sharp, strong blur fading as the picture enhanced and the quality wasn't too badly distorted. My head fell to my shoulder in surprise. "Oh my God!" I exclaimed, taking a step back. "That's Shawn Cook – that's Charles Sanders' foster brother."

* * *

><p>Through the one-way mirror, I carefully watched Shawn as he drew on the interrogation room table. He'd asked for water and I'd not seen a problem with it, so I'd given his child services advocate the glass of refreshment to take in with him. Shawn had dipped his finger in the water and then let the liquid drip onto the table so that he could draw on the surface without making too much of a mess. Also in the room was the advocate, who was patiently scanning through the causes for Shawn's interrogation, and Booth, who was preparing to lead the questioning. With me in the observation room was Brennan and a juvenile prosecutor with her long hair up in a high ponytail.<p>

"_Where were you taking Charlie, Shawn?" _Booth softly asked, keeping his hands to himself. That had been under my instruction; when he had not seriously asked for any advice with foster kids before going in (Brennan commented on his 'people skills'), I'd told him to not be hands-y or touch-y. I was surprised he was actually going through with it.

Shawn didn't look up from the tabletop and the water drops. "_I brought him to the mall to see David."_

Booth nodded understandingly. "_I know you brought him to the mall. But we got a picture of you, leading him out of the mall." _Booth slid the printed model from Angela's computer over the top of the table to Shawn, who barely glanced up at it, wanting to distract himself with his entertaining drink (or paint, however you want to think of it).

"Have you seen much of this kind of thing?" Brennan asked, her arms crossed defensively. It was obvious she'd had experience in the system. I knew already from Booth talking to Cullen that her parents had disappeared, so it made complete sense.

The prosecutor sent a half bemused, half disappointed sideways glance at the authoress. "I'm a juvenile prosecutor. I wish I could say kids killing kids was rare."

"_Where were you taking him, Shawn?" _Booth asked again.

Shawn's big eyes finally dragged themselves up to Booth, but he didn't answer the question. "_When can I talk to Margaret?"_

"_After you answer my questions,_" Booth lied. If I didn't know any better, I'd consider believing him.

"Can he do that?" Brennan demanded, her voice going high again. "Can he really lie to a kid?"

"We're after a child killer, Dr. Brennan." The prosecutor shook her head slightly, the ends of her hair brushing over her neck. "If the child advocate in there doesn't complain, I sure as hell won't."

Brennan raised her eyebrows and uncrossed her arms, one flying to point out the advocate and the other falling to her side in exasperation. "Well what's the point of having a child advocate if he doesn't advocate for the child?"

The prosecutor stopped short, giving Brennan and long, withering look. "I get the impression that you're a little confused as to what side you're on, Dr. Brennan," she said coldly.

I inclined my chin, going to Brennan's defense and coolly staring down at the third woman. "I get the impression you don't understand our emotions. Don't try to pretend, it's just infuriating. I have no ethical issues with violence."

"What emotions?" The prosecutor asked, innocent-eyed and fake. "I haven't seen you show any."

I glared, but stopped myself. A rise was exactly what the prosecutor wanted; she wanted an excuse to make me leave, because she knew that I would do all I could to help Shawn, and that would make her job harder. "Maybe you're just not very attentive," I said sharply instead.

I looked back to Shawn. He looked so lost and sad. Booth looked frustrated, and I almost face palmed for thinking that he'd be able to get something out of Shawn on his first try. I raked my hand through my hair and closed my eyes briefly before steeling myself. I coached my breathing for a moment and plastered on a small smile before moving to the interrogation room door and opening it to step through.

Booth, as I approached the table, was trying a new, more sensitive tactic. He untucked the side of his shirt and pulled it up slightly, showing a pale scar along his side. "Shawn, you know what that is?"

"A scar?" The child asked. Although he clearly knew what it was, he sounded like he thought it was a trick question.

Booth let go of his shirt hem and started to tuck it back into his trousers. "Yeah. I got it when I was playing soldier with my brother, Jared."

Shawn blinked owlishly before speaking. I quietly pulled out the chair across from Shawn and sat down calmly, trying to resist the urge to stick my tongue out at the one-way mirror. So much for the prosecutor trying to get me away from this case. Now I was directly in it. "Did it hurt?" Shawn asked with a little voice.

Booth nodded. "Yeah, it hurt. But… it was an accident, so it's okay now. You got any scars?"

_So, so many. I'm really glad you aren't asking me. _Shawn didn't reply, just lowered his eyes to his own arm and started to fumble with the shirt sleeve, struggling slightly to pull it down. A couple of round marks, a centimeter in diameter at most, made a little constellation on his arm. My fake smile slipped as I saw the injuries. _Cigarette burns. _"My dad did it with a cigarette," Shawn said quietly.

I swallowed and had to clench my fists under the table to keep my temper in check. I felt my nails dig into my skin, pinching painfully, and I focused on that. "He shouldn't have done that," I said sympathetically, calmly. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, Shawn."

"Margaret didn't do anything like that," Shawn said next, looking out to the door hopefully. "I love Margaret."

I couldn't reply, too choked up by the little boy's affection and loyalty. Booth set one of his hands on the table, showing Shawn that he was staying in place. "What I need to know is if Charlie had some kind of an accident," Booth said, hushed, like he was sharing secrets and trying to relate. Shawn just went back to staring at the table stubbornly, but he didn't keep playing in the water this time. "Shawn?"

But Shawn wasn't about to talk. Not now.

* * *

><p>AN: Note to _ElysiumPhoenix: _Thank you! As for the dialogue, I actually use transcripts when I'm writing - a lot of times, clues the character needs are in the dialogue, so whenever I write something based on TV I either find an online transcript or go through and make my own. It takes a lot of extra time, so I'm glad that it's actually helping!


	16. A Boy in a Bush, Part Four

Hodgins was paying complete attention to the microscope, his face pressed against the tool and absently marking c_rystalline; soft-cell composite _on his clipboard in messy handwriting. Angela tapped her heel.

"How do we know that this confrontation idea won't blow up in our faces?" The pretty artist asked me lowly, trying to keep Hodgins' attention away so that we could still take him by surprise.

I shrugged. "We don't, but if you really want to know for sure, you probably don't have a choice."

Angela pursed her lips. "Okay, here goes nothing." Angela swiped her keycard on the panel and motioned me up, waiting a moment before following back up onto the exam space. I waited a moment for her to master the stairs. I really, really didn't want to be alone confronting the entomologist; while I highly doubted he would become violent, I did not want to step over boundaries. Somehow if Angela was with me, it wouldn't be as bad because he knew Angela personally.

I moved to one side of Hodgins while Angela took the other. Angela crossed her arms and looked down at the comfortably-sitting scientist while I dropped my hands to the rails behind me and leaned against the platform side. Hodgins didn't talk immediately, but he nodded very slightly against the microscope's glasses in acknowledgement.

"How long have we known each other?" Angela asked, opening the mild confrontation.

"Do people really ever know each other?" Hodgins returned skeptically, his voice sounding pretty normal. While on alert by the atmosphere, he didn't seem to realize he'd been caught.

"How come you never invited me over to your house?" Angela asked, moving her hands to her hips and raising her eyebrows coyly.

Hodgins smirked very slightly. "Oh, I didn't pick up that kind of vibe from you." I nearly gagged.

"I thought we were close." Angela now seemed… almost as though she was betrayed. "All of us. What else don't I know?" Hodgins just looked away from the microscope, looking up at Angela in confusion. "Is Zach from another planet?" She asked, throwing one of her hands up.

"Oh, come on!" Hodgins snorted. "That one's obvious!"

I rolled my eyes. Angela wasn't coming out with it and, if Hodgins had kept it secret for this long, he wasn't about to just give it up himself. "You're rich," I accused. Hodgins tensed and his eyes traveled back down to stare at his microscope. I continued. "You single-handedly own the Cantilever Group. And – don't deny it. We know."

Hodgins didn't react right away. His hand slowly tightened around his pen, his knuckles turning white. "Who else knows?" He asked through tightly gritted teeth.

Angela swallowed, nervous, as she noticed the same changes in the normally friendly entomologists' smarting demeanor. "Zach and Booth."

"Don't tell Brennan."

Angela sighed and touched her fingertips to her temple. "Why don't you want us to know that you're actually our boss?" She asked.

"I don't _want _to be anybody's boss!" Hodgins growled, suddenly harsh and abrasive. "I never did!" Angela jumped back, looking apologetic and anxious. Hodgins blinked at her, loosening his fists. "Please respect that."

Angela looked down to the floor. The coldness of Hodgins' voice seemed to have unbalanced her. She nodded and, wordlessly, went back down the stairs of the platform, crossed the large room, and to the staircase leading back up to the balcony with her office.

Brennan's heels clicked across the tile as she swiped her card and stepped up. "What's up with Angela?"

I looked down to Hodgins, my expression unreadable. Hodgins looked up to meet my eyes for a few seconds, but didn't hold the eye contact and looked down darkly at the clipboard on the table in front of him again. I surveyed him for a few more seconds with narrowed eyes before deciding on something. _You're damn lucky I'm not actually offended by calling me Xena. _"It's just job pressure," I told Brennan, wanting to kick myself for lying to her.

There was a heavily pregnant pause before Hodgins cleared his throat and lifted up his clipboard. "Fluoride at lower concentrations is used in toothpaste, instant tea, and is added to our drinking water," he said, going through the mild background info before bombarding everyone with more science-y stuff. "Which, I might add, can cause a range of conditions, brain damage-"

"Which has nothing to do with the case at hand," Brennan cut him off.

Hodgins paused for another moment, recollecting his bearings. He's having a tough five minutes. "The concentrations found on our victim might come from wood preservatives, paint thinners, car wax, or various other industrial products." Hodgins yanked a piece of crisp, white paper out from under the clip and held it out to Brennan, who took it and clipped it neatly to her own clipboard.

Brennan nodded, satisfied. "Okay." She hesitated for a second. "Did Angela say anything about quitting her job?"

Hodgins shook his head. "No." Brennan inclined her chin to him before turning around and starting off again. Hodgins moodily stared back at the microscope again. "But we hardly know anything about each other."

* * *

><p>I placed my hand at my forehead and pulled back, pulling my hair back out of my face. How could someone so small be treated so miserably? I mean, I'd been treated pretty hellishly at Charles' age, too, but I hadn't ended up dead in a Medico-Legal lab. Turns out, being alone in a bone room with a sterile exam table and a child's skeleton isn't the best way to search for mental peace.<p>

Booth rapped on the threshold of the room. "Hey," he greeted softly. "Look, I thought you'd like to know that Shawn and David are in emergency care. I pulled some strings, you know, to make sure that they get to stay together."

I blinked several times. Letting my guard down around Shawn had reminded me how difficult it is to keep those walls up all of the time. "That's good. Thanks."

"It's the best I could do," Booth added.

"Yes. I understand."

"No." Booth shook his head and came into the room further. I took a step back. I felt okay being familiar with people and with locations; alone, with an armed man who was taller and more built than I was, well, familiar place and person or not, it's not the best for the safety instincts. Booth, if he noticed, didn't comment. "You say you understand, but you don't. Not really. I mean, if you don't like the rule, you ignore it, right? That's how it works in the ghetto."

I crossed my arms. "I care about the laws. I understand that you've done all you can in your position. I also understand that kidnapping is a felony. In order for the government to work without collapsing in on itself, we must follow through with legal process. Therefore, Margaret must answer for her crimes, and Shawn and David have to suffer through going back to the foster system. I do appreciate, though, that they won't have to do it alone."

Booth sighed, leaning on the side of the table and twisting his hands to push his palms against the table edge. "If you want to do this-"

"Do what?" I interrupted.

"Work on cases," Booth hastily elaborated. "You know – with me. With the lab, outside of the lab. If you want to do that, I need to know that you will respect the law."

I threw my hands up. "What does it matter?" I demanded. "This here? This is your life, okay? For me, it's a child's story. I can't keep working cases, even though I do enjoy it. I won't lie; I enjoy catching murderers and bringing them to justice. But I can't do it for forever. I have to keep it real for myself." I stopped. What was I doing, baring my soul? No, I was just antagonizing myself and the situation. "But," I added. "For the moment, if I can't respect the law, I'll at least try to abide by you."

Booth's eyes widened, taken by surprise. "Well, yeah, that'll work. I mean, it – kind of comes out of nowhere, but-"

I held out a hand to him. "Stop." I'd heard the miniscule snap. Booth, not expecting the sudden order, leaned back. Under his hands had been a yellow No. 2 pencil. It was now snapped into thirds, the wood splintering and the led inside shining in the light. "Look what you did."

Booth, perturbed, shoved his fists in his pockets. "It's a pencil. I'll get you a new one."

I looked from the pencil to the skeleton nearer the middle of the table, lifting my hands to my chest, backing away. The breaks in both were similar. I pointed at Charles' skeleton. "The victim's cause of death was chest trauma, however the ribs are broken in two places, not just one."

Booth nodded, his eyebrows furrowing as he tried to make the same connections. "Because of the brittle bones. Because of his disease."

I nodded, moving over to start going to the door. "Yeah, that was what everyone thought. But there's another explanation to it."

"Yeah, okay. What's the other explanation?" Booth asked, falling into step slightly behind me. I was half jogging down the hallway back to the domed lab entry.

"Compression." I tried to gesticulate, although when you're talking about a skeleton, it's hard to do that in great detail. "Charles Sanders was crushed to death. The evidence supports that. There are vertebral and sternal greenstick fractures, much resembling the breaks sustained by the pencil when you crushed it against the table."

"Alright, and Shawn Cook outweighed Charlie Sanders by, what, thirty pounds?" Booth shook his head negatively. "How could he have managed to crush him to death?"

I broke out of the corridor and into the main room. Angela was standing up on the balcony by her office, watching Hodgins work meticulously with Brennan as they went over more test results. "Angela!" I called, waving my hand up in the air for her attention. "We need to run some scenarios through the computer!"

"Holly! Booth!" Hurried footsteps came up from behind as Angela turned and entered her office again, preparing to warm up the computer programs. I did a one eighty. Hodgins was looking at us both pleadingly. He was slightly out of breath – he was very nervous and worried. "Zach has been informed that if he tells anyone who I am, I will kick him out on the street like a stray dog. Angela heard, and she already agreed to it, for Zach's sake, but I have a feeling that won't work with either of you. Sadly, there is nothing I can threaten you two with."

Booth and I exchanged a look. "Oh, yeah. That's a shame," I drawled sarcastically.

Hodgins sighed, bringing his hands down to his sides and repeatedly making fists, calming himself. The rubber band around his wrist was getting loose – someone's been working on their anger management a lot today. "What I want out of my life is to come in here and sift through slime and bugs." Hodgins's voice was strained, but he was determined. "Unfortunately, my family is one of those who secretly run the world."

"Paranoia and delusions of grandeur, all in one package," Booth remarked, snarky.

"You call it paranoia, I call it the family business." Booth turned back to the direction we'd been going. "Please, could you just stop!" Hodgins' breath was labored. He was really torn up about this. Booth stopped in his tracks and spun back again. Hodgins took another deep breath. "The reason that I do not want to go to that banquet is that the other members of the ruling elite will make a big fuss about seeing me. My secret will be out, and my life, this life that I _love_, will be ruined. I'm asking you both, please, _please _just let me be Jack Hodgins, who works in the lab."

* * *

><p>"Charlie was three feet, four inches tall, and weighed fifty-eight pounds," Angela dictated as she entered the data for a holographic recreation. "Shawn Cook is 1.4 meters tall and weighs thirty-one kilograms. Shawn's brother, David, is five foot eight and one hundred fifty pounds."<p>

Brennan faced Angela and Booth, while I stood beside her. Brennan was taking it upon herself to explain the change in the game. "At first, we thought the break to Charlie's sternum was caused by blunt trauma because it only ran along one fault line. But when Booth broke the pencil, we realized that there is another way to cause the same type of injury – compression."

Angela set up so that the holograph projected a small body lying on his back. "Hodgins found no particulates that suggested crushing."

"Body weight," Brennan said, answering even though it hadn't been a direct question. "There has to be enough weight on the victim to stop the abdomen from moving so no air can get into the lungs." The holograph's figure turned translucent as another figure of the same transparency appeared on top of the first's chest, legs bent and pushing down. "Prolonged pressure caused the sternum to snap in half, and the ribs to break." Angela sped up the recreation and, with a soft snapping sound, the digital ribcage snapped.

Angela flinched. "Sorry… I entered real-world variables, taking into account Charlie's size, and the amount of pressure that was required to break Charlie's sternum in the way that it was broken."

"Well, what did you end up with?" Booth asked, urging her on.

"86.2 kilograms."

Booth looked at me. "What's that in American?"

I thought for a moment. I never did like the metric system that much, but I did learn it. "Roughly one hundred ninety pounds."

Angela frowned down at her touchpad. "That's way too much for either of the Cook kids or Margaret Sanders."

Booth shifted his weight to his other leg. "I'd put the neighborhood kid, Skyler, at about one sixty, so it can't be him, either."

I crossed my arms despite the relief I felt. I'd have a much easier time emotionally charging an adult with murder than I would a vulnerable child in the foster system. "We should be looking for a fully grown adult male."

Brennan looked at Booth. "You have to get Shawn to tell you where he took Charlie when they left the mall."

Booth sighed. "He won't talk to me."

"I can try," Brennan offered.

Booth scoffed. "Um, no. You know, people are not your strong point, Bones. And besides, he's not going to care how many facts you put in front of him."

I looked down at the floor. "Let me do it," I implored quietly. The tiles under my feet were suddenly very interesting. Facts were facts; Shawn had been more inclined to Booth after Booth had shown him how he'd been hurt, and if you're looking for physical evidence of injury, well, I'm a hotspot. And also a complete package; I mean, not only am I scarred, but I can really relate to Shawn, having been in the foster system for almost as long as I can remember. I didn't want to let these people around me know about all of the abuse; they treated me like an equal, and knowing that would almost certainly tarnish that. But an innocent child's murderer would walk if I didn't at least try.

All three of them were surprised. Even though I was paying more attention to the linoleum, I could hear the silence. "Alright." Booth consented after an eternal moment.

* * *

><p>I'd tried a different tactic this time with Shawn than I had last time. I drew a chair up to the interrogation table next to him and diagonal from the advocate, angling the chair so that I would be facing the child. The static I heard through the earpiece was distracting and only reminded me that whatever I said in here, it wouldn't be secret. It served to remind me that I was being watched and recorded, which made my heart beat faster than normal.<p>

"Do you remember me, Shawn?" I asked, keeping my voice down so I didn't intimidate him on accident.

"You fixed my game and our bike. You're smart," Shawn said, in an innocent, small voice.

"Yeah, I am pretty smart," I agreed.

"_And very modest,_" the prosecutor sarcastically said. I heard through the earpiece.

Booth probably crossed his arms. "_Oh, believe me, she is being modest." _I didn't know how to react to the compliment, so I just pretended I didn't hear.

I set my hands, palms-down, on the table and leaned forward, closer to Shawn. "I'm smart enough to know that you didn't kill Charlie." I let that sit for a moment in the air. Shawn tensed and turned in his chair so his back was to me. "You don't have to say anything, Shawn. Just listen." Shawn didn't say anything or move, but I knew he would hear me. I clenched my hands into fists as I tried to recall everything horrific about the system that was normal, and not just my foster families. "They give you a garbage bag to carry all of your things, like they're telling you everything you own is garbage. They won't buy you new clothes or shoes, thinking the next family will do it for you, but they don't say anything so your new parents don't know you need it. You go to school and you're teased and insulted for tearing shoes and too big or too small shirts. And you never feel like you belong, because everyone in your new home knows each other when they don't know you, and you don't know them."

"All the regular kids know you're a foster kid." Shawn sniffed. I paled slightly; I hadn't meant to make him start crying! "How do you know what it's like?" Shawn turned a little bit, closer to me.

But now that I'd started hitting buttons, I couldn't just stop. "They bounce you from place to place, and it's never really home. Sometimes the foster parents are mean, or they don't try to understand. Sometimes they really hurt you. I've been burned with cigarettes, too." Shawn peeked at me and I slowly started to roll up the sleeve of my sweater just high enough to show the first of the scars. There were a couple of burns that were darker than the rest of the skin, and a few thin, silvery scars from thin blades. It was so plain to see that I'd been hurt several times. Shawn's eyes widened and a few tears began to fall down his face. The advocate on the other side of the table visibly paled.

What I hated more was the reactions of the people on the other side of the one-way mirror, which I heard through the earpiece. The prosecutor gasped loudly.

"_Oh my God," _Booth exclaimed. "_She never told us about this! She never mentioned…" _his voice trailed off in horror and I blinked, seeing my vision start to cloud over as tears formed in my eyes. This was exactly what I'd been trying so hard to avoid. I wanted to go curl up under a rock and die. But now that I'd gotten this far, it would be stupid to stop.

"But sometimes they do try, and they care about you. Sometimes they're nice." I wish I'd known that firsthand.

"Like Margaret?" Shawn asked, lifting his hands to rub at his tear-filled eyes.

"Yeah," I nodded, blinking back my own emotions. "And sometimes when you do get friends in the system, they separate you. It must have been really nice with Margaret, because they let you stay with David."

Shawn choked, his eyes squeezing shut. "We got bunk beds," he shared, his voice pitching higher in his distress. "At night, I knew David was there. Like he was guarding me. Margaret's nice."

I sympathetically smiled at him. "You'd do almost anything to stay with Margaret, right?" Shawn nodded immediately, almost frantic. "The man you took Charlie to – the man who hurt him – he knows that. You didn't know that he'd hurt Charlie, but he did. And then he told you that Margaret would blame you and hate you." I reached out, attempting to quell my own nerves as I placed my hand softly over Shawn's smaller one. "This man is lying to you, Shawn. I can make sure that you go back to Margaret."

"How?" Shawn was openly crying now. Point gotten through, I dropped my sleeve, letting it fall back down to my wrist.

I looked straight at the one-way mirror. "I have a friend at the FBI." My voice was cool and even, despite the raging whirlwind of depression threatening to cloak me. "If I ask him to, he will make sure that you and David get to live with Margaret again."

The advocate started to shake his head warningly. "Miss Kirkland, you can't make promises that."

"Yes, I can." I argued stonily. "He will do it. My friend will make it happen."

"_Oh, man," _Booth groaned.

I turned back to Shawn, trying not to seem aggressive like I had with the advocate. "But for that to happen, Shawn, you have to tell me who hurt Charlie."

Shawn stared down at the table. His tears dripped down his face and onto the wooden surface. If the situation wasn't so demanding, I'd hate myself for making such a sweet kid cry so hard.

"_I'm gonna need your help to keep the promises she made to that boy," _Booth said, presumably to the prosecutor.

The prosecutor was caught off guard by his seriousness. "_Hey, I – I can't promise-"_

"_Mrs. Johnson, my people and your people are going to have to make this happen."_

"What if Margaret doesn't want me anymore?" Shawn asked, doubling over and hugging his knees as he brought his heels up to the chair. "Charlie was her real son."

"Charlie wasn't her biological son, either," I corrected him gently. "Charlie was just like you; someone that Margaret chose to love. I don't think we should let that man take you, and David, and Charlie away from Margaret… do you?" Shawn shook his head fiercely. "We should stop him. You and I should stop him together."

Shawn didn't say anything for a long moment, hugging his knees close to his chest while tears raced down his cheeks. Finally, Shawn reached his arms up and let his feet fall off of the chair, sliding off and moving the few steps to me. The child used the table and the back of my chair to heave himself up into my lap, and then, while I was still totally stunned, he wrapped his arms around my neck and clung to me, pressing his face against my shoulder and crying.

I tensed up. Too many memories of my neck being touched while I was being assaulted flooded back, but this was… this was just a little boy. A scared little boy who just wanted his 'mother.' I forced back the nauseous feeling in my stomach and wrapped my arms around Shawn, holding him close to me while he sobbed.

"_She's hugging. It's a miracle," _Booth said, though his voice was drained, still in shock of my injuries.

Shawn's small frame was wracked by intense sobs. I pushed back the waves of my irrational fear of human contact and tried harder to comfort him. I mean, his brother was killed, he played a part in it, and he thought his mother hated him and was scared he'd lose his only other family. The guilt must be overwhelming for anyone, let alone a child. I swallowed dryly, trying not to focus on the arms around my neck and rather the sound of sniffles and tears. I raised one hand up to the back of Shawn's head, petting his hair softly for a moment before rocking him. Studies have proven that a soft, steady rocking motion is calming to children during an overflow of stimuli.

Shawn took a moment to lift his head from my shoulder and whisper in my ear, his voice cracking as he trembled before he went right back to hugging and crying and trying to hide away from the rest of the world.

"_She did it," _Booth breathed, his voice dumbstruck. "_She got his name."_

* * *

><p>I speed walked over to the exterminator, going straight past Skyler and slamming my fist down on the side of the truck. The bang successfully got the attention of Skyler's father, who turned around to look at me with narrowed eyes. "Was it <em>fun<em>?" I demanded, spitting the words with venom. "Was it _fun _for you to assault and murder a kid?"

"Excuse me?" He asked, with a slight suburban inflection. "I have no idea what you're asking."

I moved closer, stepping up into his face. "You manipulated Shawn Cook into bringing Charles Sanders to you, where you then lied to Shawn and emotionally tortured him by telling him that his mother would hate him! You sexually assaulted Charlie before crushing him to death, and then you dumped him in a field like he was garbage! Did you have fun hurting little children who couldn't fight you away?" He was still bewildered but his looks were getting angry, so I allowed myself to continue. "Did Charlie's screams turn you on, you sick, twisted bastard? Were you getting off on his pain while he was violated and injured? How the hell would you like it if I compressed your chest, huh? Maybe we should try! Get on the ground! I'll put the truck keys in the fucking ignition while you do that, and maybe I'll have fun crushing you, you rotten son of a bitch!"

"I never touched any kid!" Ellie's husband shouted back at me, denying it.

That was it for me. I reached up to his neck and scratched my nails on his skin while I fisted the collar of his shirt. With both hands, I yanked him around and slammed him up against the side of the vehicle. I kicked out with one foot, hitting his shin and disabling him from trying to run away. My vision started to blur, but at this point I was beyond self-control. I let go of his collar with one hand and balled my hand into a fist, slamming it straight into his stomach. If I hadn't been practically holding him up, he would have crumpled. He went nearly limp.

"This is what it felt like," I hissed at him. "Crippled, injured, scared, intimidated, and too hurt to run away, let alone fight back. That little boy trusted you, and you _used _him." I dug my fist against his bones. It had to hurt like a bitch. "You know what I think? I think you're just a pathetic pervert. You can't revel in your own perverse fantasies because even your own wife knows that you're sick. You can't get a woman bound to you to sleep with you, so you took it out on a child! You know, if I were like you, this would be scratching the surface of what I'd do to you. I'd make you suffer like you made Charlie suffer. Except, unlike Charlie, I'm not a sixty-pound child who didn't know how to fight. I'm fully capable of killing you, right now, and if I had no morals, like you, I'd do it, too."

I let go and moved back, freeing him. His legs gave out and he fell to the floor, hunching himself over and moaning. I sneered at him. "Luckily for you, I'm not a cold-blooded monster. My compassion tempers my anger, even when children are hurt. So I'll have to settle for this." I unchained the handcuffs from my belt loop. I'd nearly forgotten they were there in my rage. I'd asked Booth if I could arrest this one, just so I could fly off the handle a little bit without anyone stopping me from inflicting a fraction of the pain this monster had caused.

"Edward Nelson, you are under arrest for the sexual assault and murder of Charles Sanders. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you, free of charge."

* * *

><p>I held Shawn in my arms for the second time as David, Shawn, and I waited for Margaret to be released from booking. Shawn had been so nervous that he'd raised his arms up in a silent question, and since he was just so much like I used to be, I'd consented, pushing away the irritating nerves. Physical contact, which I'd deprived myself of for years and years, was soothing, as humans are naturally social creatures, so aside from the instinctual fear of being hurt, it wasn't a bad thing to hold up the child. Besides, that it was just a child made it less scary for me. Make no mistake, I'm not about to start hugging everyone.<p>

David stood next to me, eyeing his little brother protectively, although Shawn was happy where he was. Finally, the thick grey door opened and Margaret ran through, a uniformed officer behind her. "Boys," Margaret cried in relief.

I shifted Shawn and set him down on his feet and he ran to his mother. David hurried over to her, too, although he tried not to seem as enthusiastic as Shawn, even though it was obvious he'd missed Margaret just as much. "Mom!" Shawn exclaimed, hugging Margaret tightly.

"Are we gonna be a family again?" David asked hopefully, hugging Margaret and Shawn at the same time.

"Oh, you bet," Margaret replied, ruffling his hair affectionately.

* * *

><p>I held up an envelope and Brennan pushed the papers inside, taking the folder and sealing it tightly. The Charles Sanders case was completed, and we were just cleaning up after ourselves.<p>

"We have him cold," Booth said from the doorway. "The insecticide he was using on the termites matches the fluoride concentration perfectly. Skyler's dad admitted everything." Booth looked at me with a deadpan expression. "Curiously, he kept holding his sides, and when we had a medic check him, the bone in his lower leg was bruised and one of his ribs had a small fracture."

I held up my hands. "He yelled and approached me. His expression was totally psycho. Self-defense all the way."

"Don't tell me," Brennan said, sighing at the predictability. "And let me guess, he said crushing Charlie to death was a mistake."

"What about Shawn?" I asked before Booth could answer. I know I probably sounded like I thought I was Shawn's mother, but the way I related to him and how he had trusted me to protect him drove me to make sure he was okay, going above and beyond what was considered 'above and beyond.'

Booth inclined his head and made a 'calm down' motion with his hand. "He never abused Shawn Cook, he just used him to get near Charlie." I took a deep breath. That wasn't okay, but at least he'd never touched Shawn. After what he'd done to Charlie, maybe killing the boy was merciful in the long run. "It played out just like you said. He had Charlie out in that field. Some teenage kids, they come by, so he knelt on Charlie to keep him from crying out. Shawn got scared and ran back to his brother."

"Charlie was small, and weak. His sternum collapsed." Brennan sighed, shaking her head, her hair falling from behind her shoulders. She looked up. "Do you think he abused any other kids?"

"Probably his own son," I guessed, remembering how Skyler had seemed both rough and was quiet at the same time. Speak out? You get beaten. Don't shield yourself? Getting beaten hurts a thousand times more.

"Yeah," Booth said softly in agreement. "I reported it to Child Services. They'll get the kid some help." Brennan nodded to herself, satisfied, and then lifted several folders up and walked out of the office, presumably to gather more information to finish the paperwork. Booth remained with me. He paused for a moment, like he was weighing what he was about to say. "Look… I'm sorry."

"For what?" I asked evenly. He'd done what I wanted; Shawn and David Cook were back with Margaret.

"You have personal experience in the system."

I stared at the ground and tensely smiled softly. "Yeah. You knew that, though."

"Hm… When you said, 'they take you away from your brother,' I kind of had the feeling you weren't talking about David Cook."

I looked up at him, my expression haunted. "Yeah. I was adopted and had an older brother. But some stuff came up, the parents left, and he enlisted. The foster system is the easiest to blame because they were threatening to take me back by the time he left." I laughed harshly. "It doesn't matter now. I don't know him. He left me."

Booth shifted his weight, exhaling slowly. "Look," he said, obviously uncertain of himself. "Those wounds…"

I knew this would come up eventually. With Booth's alpha male behavior, there was no way this could have been pushed back too much further. And now I knew I had no choice but to talk about it. "Those wounds are old. They don't hurt." Not physically, at least.

"But they're there," he disagreed. "Those scars… How did you get them? I don't suppose there was a chance it was a freak accident, and you just implied abuse so Shawn would trust you?" He seemed really hopeful. I felt tears stinging my eyes and shook my head.

"No. Abuse. Well, one's from a fight when a couple of drunks followed me on my way home. But it's mostly abuse."

"Are there more?"

This was what I'd really been dreading. This line of questioning was getting too close to home; I held these secrets very close and I didn't like revealing them. "Yeah. It's not too bad, though," I lied.

"How old?"

"Sorry?" I asked, not sure what he meant. I tilted my head in confusion. Did it really matter how old the scars were?

Booth coughed. "How old were you when the abuse started?"

I looked down at my shoes. I wanted to lie and say it was just in the past year or so, but… I couldn't. The scars and burns were obviously older than that. Several traced back to when I was still Charles Sanders' age.

"That bad, huh?" My silence was taken as an answer.

"I'm used to it." I shoved my hands in my pockets. "I've gotten over it." I saw an open case file with an evidence back of silt. I read it from upside down on Brennan's desk. It was marked a priority. A small smile graced my features as I lifted up the evidence and a file. I gave Booth a definitive look and my next words were soft, but firm, leaving no room for argument. "I have to go get ready for a banquet I don't want to go to. And you should stop thinking about it."

* * *

><p>"That is most certainly not formal wear, Miss Kirkland," Dr. Goodman said in a slight scold as I approached the small congregation by the entryway. What surprised me the most was that I was holding evidence and a case file, and no one commented. It almost made me feel like my presence was welcome.<p>

I looked down at my attire – old sneakers, denim faded jeans, and a baggy, oversized sweatshirt that served the purpose of covering all of the scars. Then I shrugged. "I told you before – I'm not wearing a dress. I'm technically a civilian, so you have no leverage over me. I either dress like I normally do, or I'm not going."

Well, Dr. Goodman couldn't argue with that. Instead, he turned on Hodgins. "That is not a tuxedo, Dr. Hodgins."

Hodgins smiled, at peace with his decision. "I am not going, Dr. Goodman."

"You are going," Dr. Goodman disagreed, not raising his voice. He stepped forwards and neatly tucked Hodgins' black-bordered nametag in his lab coat's pocket. "When we arrive, the donors will all be wearing nametags."

"What do we talk about?" Zach asked, frowning down at the nametag he received.

"Your work, of course," the doctor said, exasperated, as he moved to hand one to Angela.

Angela didn't reach to take the item. "Zach's work consists of removing flesh from corpses and Hodgins dissects bugs that have been eating people's eyeballs."

"Leave me out of it," Hodgins requested. "I'm not going."

Dr. Goodman ignored him pointedly, instead narrowing his eyes at Angela curiously. "And how do you see your job?"

Angela nodded her head to the side grimly. "I draw death masks."

"Is that really how you see it?" Dr. Goodman inquired, surprised.

"Don't you?"

Dr. Goodman let the hand holding Angela's nametag fall to his side. He was clearly feeling very strongly about his point. "You are the best of us, Miss Montenegro. You discern humanity in the wreck of a ruined human body. You give victims back their faces, their identities. You remind us all of why we're here in the first place – because we treasure human life."

As Brennan came out of the bathroom, soft traces of makeup on her face and wearing a grey, soft formal dress without sleeves, Angela went teary-eyed and stepped forward suddenly, wrapping her arms around Dr. Goodman in an embrace without warning. "What happened?" Brennan asked, taken aback.

"Oh, for God's sake," Dr. Goodman muttered.

Zach raised his eyebrows and told Brennan his blunt observations. "Apparently all Angela needed was to hear her job description in a deep, African-American tone."

"Hear, hear," I murmured.

"Mr. Addy," Dr. Goodman remarked, scolding, as Angela stepped away from him, rubbing her eyes briefly.

I looked down to my hands and then abruptly remembered what I was holding. As Booth joined the weird party, I held out the evidence bag of brown dirt to Hodgins, who took it skeptically, giving me a 'what is this' look. "Dr. Goodman, we need Hodgins to stay in the lab tonight." I held up the file and flipped open the front cover triumphantly. The inside was marked with a priority tag and had tomorrow's date written on it in red pen. "The FBI needs that analyzed by morning."

It dawned on Hodgins and he gave me a smile of relief and gratitude. "I'll get right on it," he said, locking eyes with me. _Thank you, _he mouthed.

Dr. Goodman held up his hands for everyone to stop. "Wait a minute, what case file is this?"

"Am I supposed to know about it?" Brennan asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Booth mentioned it to me earlier today," Angela lied, catching on to my intentions.

Brennan took Angela's word for it and nodded in acceptance. "That's good enough for me."

Outnumbered, Dr. Goodman had to concede. "Fine," he said, not very thrilled with the new game plan. "You're off the hook, Dr. Hodgins." He motioned Hodgins away. On the way back to his lab, Hodgins gave me a last smile of thanks. I put my finger over my lips in a 'shh' gesture and smiled back. "Let's not keep the limo waiting."


	17. The Man in the Wall, Part One

It didn't seem like it took very long for three more days to fly by. April was beginning to turn into spring, a time to kiss the cold goodbye. Warm breezes swept in the bar when the door opened to tease its inhabitants with tantalizing scents of beginning floral growths, and walking to the bar was ever the more pleasurable with the sun beating down on my hair and making it warm to the touch. Even the loser drunks of the city seemed to be taking a break today, and I was able to enjoy my walk to work this morning without even a barest tint of discomfort.

All in all, my mood was as high as a kite – well, at least as high as the bar ceiling, which is somewhere around twelve to fifteen feet high. I'd taken to swinging by my current guardians' abandoned residence every afternoon, checking the mailbox in case I happened to find mail from the government regarding my testimony against Martin Davis's murderer, but so far, nothing had come up.

On that note, I hadn't been in contact with anyone from the Jeffersonian since the banquet about seventy-two hours ago. Admittedly, it hadn't been as depressing as I expected. I didn't like people, but I didn't mind a party. Yes, I know those two contradict, but I like having a lot of stimuli. It distracts me from more pressing matters. Mostly I'd been able to relax and be alone, drinking sparkling cider in the corner. As long as I talked to people and waved away some reporters (What? The news says they were threatened? Psht, that didn't happen. Christ, they'll make up anything to get attention), I could mostly stay by myself. Plus they had free gourmet food, which was quite a change from the microwave-made Kraft macaroni I'd had planned. True, Dr. Goodman had ended up introducing me to a few of his friends, and that wasn't my favorite pastime, but it was better than being thrown to the dogs. Well, paparazzi. Aren't they the same thing? Dr. Goodman made sure that they knew I didn't want to be touched, as he must have told them that trying to shake my hand would result in an ICU doctor shaking their head in sadness – or something along those lines.

I was being a waitress today, enjoying myself despite the bustling bar. It helped we had a few of our employees back. Being understaffed hadn't been bad before, because we'd not been busy, but now that it was warming up and final exams were coming, teachers were coming down with their friends to get intoxicated (and, quite possibly, incarcerated). Our fourteen year old, a midget with long, sandy hair named Drake, was serving food while I, the oldest responsible employee, was tasked with the duty of alcohol, which kept me busy enough to not be bored, but gave me enough leeway to not have to hurry.

I held a round, stainless steel tray against my waist with one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other, having just refilled someone's glass. My hair was tied up in a high ponytail, neatly brushed, and I had a thin layer of lip gloss on. Screw Andy for making telling me to wear 'a little something extra to make us some more cash.' I think in all actuality he was trying to say, 'don't wear the sweatshirt,' but to hell if that's going to happen. "What can I get for you today? You can ask me for alcohol and it'll be over in a max of three minutes, or I can go get our waiter for you to relay a meal order. It's all the same to me."

The person looked up from their phone and gave me a sly smile at my dumbfounded expression. "Can I order a Holly Kirkland to go?"

I nearly dropped the scotch bottle. Grinning up at me from mascara-attacked lashes was the forensic artist, Angela Montenegro. "Shush!" I yelped, moving quickly to hide her from view of Andy's office. "What are you doing here? Can you fight off an entire gang?" I demanded, keeping my voice hushed, but at the same time not bothering to hide my panic.

I had no doubt Angela could take care of herself in the heart of the city. She was used to that. But she was dressed in expensive, nice, designer clothing and her looks weren't lacking. She was beautiful and had money, so she had a stable job and a good life, in a place where no one there would have that. Plus, she worked with feds. The lowlifes here wouldn't make the distinction between federal officers and Angela, and if they weren't in a good mood, well… Angela would be taken on and I highly doubted she could fight the same way I could. She put herself in danger by coming here alone.

"No," Angela said, giving me a weird look. I nearly face planted on the table. She had no clue how stupid an idea it had been to come here without a weapon.

I looked around, reaching a hand up to my ponytail and smoothed it down against my neck, taking a long, long breath. "Okay. Why would you want 'a Holly Kirkland to go?'" No use making a big scene of it. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those dangers were in here right now.

Angela sighed, shaking her head at my apparent cluelessness. "There is a club tonight that I found specifically so that I could drag you with Bren and I, because it is eighteen and up, and you only need ID if you want alcohol."

"Angela, I'd not eighteen or up."

"You could pass for eighteen or up."

"I have no federal identification."

"Are you planning on getting alcohol?"

"Uh, no, not particularly."

"Then you won't need identification."

"Okay. Fair enough."

"So you'll come?" Angela asked hopefully, lifting her purse very slightly like that was what she'd come for.

I looked back at the bar. Drake didn't seem to notice anything off about my current customer. "Look, I really have to work. I've only done about a third of what I should have in the past three weeks because of these cases, and I'm lucky enough to have the FBI excuse that for me."

Angela tilted her head at me, her expression the picture of ultimate seriousness. "Come on. Sweetie, you're seventeen. You work hard. You work in a lousy bar or you catch murderers, and both of those entitle you to a trip to a club."

"Even if I'm not allowed to be there."

"Now you're getting it!"

I looked up at the ceiling, chewing at my lip. One more night with Angela and Brennan couldn't hurt anyone… and… I didn't have work tonight… I looked down at Angela, letting go of my lip and giving her a solid look that could not be argued with. "I have to leave by two a.m.," I told her seriously.

Angela smiled triumphantly, standing up from the booth and giving me a very satisfied look. "Then I'll pick you up here when you get off."

"Nine p.m., then."

* * *

><p>Angela picked me up in her car. It was a little, shining silver ride that stood out like black on white in this neighborhood, but I glanced around to make sure no one was eyeing us violently before getting in the passenger's side.<p>

I was relieved when we got to the Jeffersonian. Angela passed through the lab very business-like and led me straight to Brennan's office, where the anthropologist was rushing around, collecting papers and trying to reorganize her workspace. As we went in, Brennan's eyes flashed to us and she rushed from the front of her desk around to her computer, where she clicked on her email icon and started to create a new message.

"Come on, honey," Angela started, lifting up Brennan's nice, warm, fuzzy coat from the couch in invitation.

Brennan didn't look up from the computer to the jacket, instead, squinting against the monitor's glow and not blinking. "I'm just finishing up a few emails. My publisher wants to schedule a book tour. I'm just confirming dates."

"That can wait, sweetie," Angela said, fondly sighing.

Brennan seemed not to share the same opinion. The hard-working scientist let Angela's dismissal of the emails go and instead stood up, leaving the browser open as she bustled past Angela and I to go straight back to the coffee table, where a large stack of papers with post-its, edits in pen, and paperclips were piled on top of each other. She picked up the first paper clipped bundle and read the first page. "There's a student that needs help identifying the cause of a fracture on a lateral epicondyle."

Angela raised an eyebrow with an otherwise perfect poker face. "T.G.I.F.. Have you heard of that?" Angela made a little dancing sway with her hips and waved her arms up in the air above her head.

"Yeah, it's some kind of acronym," Brennan said vaguely, not very interested. I half couldn't believe she knew the phrase "lateral epicondyle" and didn't know what T.G.I.F. stood for. "But my inbox is full." Brennan tried to go back to her computer. I had to admire her persistence when Angela was so obviously determined.

Angela shook her head, giving me an exasperated look to vent her frustration. "We both know that's not true."

Deterred once more, Brennan left the computer for a second time and went back to the next bundle of papers. "There's a… TV show that needs research, not that they listen to it…"

"We're going," Angela announced, snatching the papers away from Brennan and flopping them haphazardly back on the stack. She even went so far as to begin to push Brennan's lab coat off of her shoulders.

Brennan turned around so Angela could pull the jacket off of her, but she cast a longing look at a human skull resting on a cushion designed for the purpose. It was sitting on its own little corner of the coffee table, giving off an eerie feeling as it smiled creepily. "I really should catalog that skull. It's in the museum exhibit on the French Revolution."

Angela hummed to tell Brennan that not only did she know, she also didn't really care. "Yeah. Pepé le Pew is more important than booze and boys." Angela tossed the authoress's lab coat over on the couch, where it folded over itself limply, selecting the warmer, fuzz-lined coat to take its place.

Brennan let Angela herd her out of the office and I followed obediently. Angela would probably scold my ear off if I tried to ditch or talk my way out of it, now. Brennan looked behind her again as Angela gently pushed. "I don't think that's his name."

"It was a literature/media joke," I explained to Brennan with a shrug. "Angela knows that the chances that the skull's identity is that of a Pepé le Pew is very small, if not nil. I'd say she mostly said it to bother you."

"Well if I weren't as tired, I would be able to honestly say that she had succeeded."

* * *

><p>The emcee was having the time of his life in the musty, brightly-lit, crowded club. "<em>Alright, everybody! We're going to keep in crankin' here tonight! Tonight the Basement Club brings you the number one deejay around town, Deejay Rules!" <em>Well, it sounded like he was saying 'Rules,' but, being well-acquainted with stupidity from this part of town, the deejay's name was probably spelled R-U-L-Z or R-U-L-S or something silly like that. There was also the possibility that Rules was the deejay's real name, but I didn't think that that was very likely.

The club definitely wasn't the best (I mean, hey, the security guards outside let a seventeen year old in without asking for identification), but it was stereotypical. Alcohol, young adults, some women dressed like prostitutes and a few men looking out of place by wearing Hawaiian shirts. Several older men were sitting at the bar and enjoying ogling the younger women on the dance floor, shamelessly staring. Brennan and Angela had dragged me to the bar and ordered a low-alcohol martini and a whiskey, respectively. Angela was not willing to let go of her time to get hung over, but Brennan seemed to keep in mind that someone had to drive, and I didn't have a license, even if I did know how. The dance floor was so crowded I couldn't see the actual floor, instead seeing tacky neon colors mixed in with darker hues. Silver light spun from an old disco ball that had been scratched several places at one time or another.

"It feels good, doesn't it?" Angela asked Brennan happily, speaking very loudly over the hip-hop deejays and civilian masses. Her eyes were taking longer than normal to focus on one thing at a time, but other than that it was hard to tell she was on her way to getting tipsy. She could hold her liquor pretty well. "Being with people who are alive?"

Brennan nodded excitedly over her glass. "It's very stimulating, I have to admit!"

Angela looked back down at the drink in her hand, grinning enthusiastically. "We are so gonna tear it up tonight!"

Brennan frowned slightly, probably wondering whether or not Angela meant that literally. "That's slang, right?" She asked me.

"Right," I confirmed, practically yelling over the loud volume. "She means we're going to have a lot of fun."

Brennan looked down at her clothes. Angela had made us drop by her apartment complex and then forced Brennan to go upstairs to her apartment and find 'suitable club clothes.' Brennan had come back wearing skinny jeans (which I never would have thought would be in her closet) and two-inch heeled boots with a spaghetti-strap cotton grey top and a black cord necklace with a green pendant. "Is my costume alright?"

Angela sighed at her friend's hopelessness. "Sweetie, it's not a costume. It's a cute outfit. And yes, it looks perfect."

"I know, it's very – it's very warm in here!" Brennan agreed, 'understanding.'

Angela rolled her eyes. "No, because it looks great!" She clinked her alcohol back onto the bar top and grabbed Brennan by the arm, giving her only a few seconds to put her drink down. Angela sent me a mildly threatening look and I sighed, sliding off my seat and following Angela as she pulled Brennan through the crowd on the dance floor. "We are so getting checked out!" Angela exclaimed, winking.

"Those poor men have no clue what they're getting themselves into," I muttered. Either they were ogling a carefree, live-in-the-moment artist who was cool but admittedly a lot to handle, or an anthropologist with highly lacking social skills. Not that either of those is a bad thing, but I bet it's just a shocker to find out that your hot date is more interested in engaging you in a conversation of the anthropological meanings of certain gestures than sleeping with you.

Brennan turned her head, trying to see everywhere. "I love this music!" She had to shout to be heard now that we were in the heart of the noise.

Angela smiled, all daydream-like. "Deejay Rules, he is so hot." She let the music get the better of her and started rocking, putting her hands up and dancing.

"It's so tribal," Brennan mused, still looking around.

I flinched. "Don't say 'tribal,' Dr. Brennan." Saying that with these sorts of people? Not a good idea.

"Why?" She asked, honestly confused, but then it dawned on her. "Oh, because of all the black people?" Eyes started to turn to us when they heard the words Brennan was carelessly throwing out. I felt like many of them were quickly turning hostile.

Angela seemed to have the same feeling. "Sweetie, just for tonight, have fun. Stop dissecting and take part."

"African-Americans aren't the only ones with tribal heritage," she said, starting to sway to the music. I stood still, not feeling like dancing now that so many threatening gazes were being sent our way.

A woman with black skin and large, bushy black hair put her hands on her wide hips, shoving her way past a couple of people to get to Brennan. "You say we're natives of some tribe?" She demanded loudly, getting even more people watching. I started sucking on the inside of my cheek nervously.

Brennan blinked. "Anthropologically speaking, we're all members of tribes."

A second woman, dressed in a red shirt, rather standoffishly pushed her way to the first's side. "You better shut your mouth!" She warned.

More and more people began to gather around and Angela and Brennan both stopped dancing as they became the center of some very negative attention. Brennan tried to back off, but there really wasn't anywhere she could go, so she held up her hands, trying to make peace. "I just meant that hip-hop mirrors the direct visceral connection you see in tribal communication."

"What?" A drunken man asked, angry mostly just because he probably couldn't see straight, let alone understand what Brennan had said.

"After the Cartesians split in the seventeenth century," Brennan began to elaborate, mistaking the man's question for something different entirely. "We separated our mind from our bodies the numinous from the animalistic."

"You calling me an animal, fool?" The first woman asked, taking an intimidating step forwards.

Another woman waved her hand in the air. "No, fool. She's using Descartes' philosophy to say she's down with the music."

Until this point, I'd been mostly ignored, since I hadn't really said anything. But, sensing a possible scene about to occur, I took a step in front of Brennan and Angela and spread my arms in front of them, taking slow steps back and trying to get them against the wall. It was a primitive instinct to get against another surface so that I couldn't be attacked from behind, but it had served me well so far. I clenched my hands into fists and glared around at the people going after us with hostility.

Although I didn't like it, in this environment and surrounded by these people, it was a bad idea to not try to be submissive unless attacked. "We don't mean any offense," I said, inclining my chin to the three women and gathering crowd. "We'll be going." It was just plain stupid to stay after this.

"You'll be staying right here to explain yourselves!" The first woman declared, stomping her foot for emphasis. I tensed; if anyone else agreed with her, then mob mentality might kick in, and it would be hard to leave without a fight.

"We were just saying we liked the music." Although I hadn't said anything, saying 'we' instead of 'she' would make it seem like I'd been involved, which might make them more inclined to take on myself instead of Brennan. While I had no doubt Brennan could take care of herself, as far as I knew, she wasn't armed, and some of the people around here play dirty. I'm not the only one around that carries concealed weaponry.

"No, you weren't saying nothing," the second woman growled at me. I chanced a look behind me; the wall was only a few feet away from the people I was trying to protect. I turned back to the women. "They was. Get outta my way."

Her intent to be violent to Brennan was blatantly obvious, and the women behind her were nodding. I was sure I could take them on myself, but if other people got angry, there was no way in hell I'd be able to fight an entire club of people and still manage to protect two others. So I resorted to returning threats with violence.

I reached into my pocket and withdrew the Swiss army knife, the blade snapping open. It was sharp and glinted in the disco's shining light. Several people took steps back, but several also pushed forward, enraged at the threat I posed. I pushed Angela and Brennan up against the wall and maneuvered to extend the knife at everyone surrounding us. I wasn't afraid to be violent if the situation called for it.

A man (who was probably drunk) stepped through the others' ranks and to me, grabbing my upper arm with enough force to leave a bruise. "You shouldn't have done that, bitch!" I whirled on him, hitting the side of his face with the flat of the blade. It left a shallow cut and a future headache, but it was enough to stun him. His grip loosened and I pushed my foot between his, taking the hand not holding the knife and pushing his wrist behind his back and then kicking to the side. The man fell over onto the ground.

Another man (wow, another drunk), spitting, flew at me. I grabbed his wrist before he got to me and his momentum made him keep going. His wrist snapped, dislocating, and he howled in pain. I spun, forcefully pulling him with me and then releasing him. He sailed into the wall, which snapped and broke.

The angry voices and yells stopped as the plaster broke open. The huge gap in the wall was the origin of a white fog which covered everyone in a ten-foot diameter, myself, Brennan, and Angela included. I breathed in shallowly, not sure what it was. Nothing happened, but it was a semi-sweet smell and I kind of wanted more. I recognized the scent and didn't bother to control my breathing anymore. Dear Lord, who hides methamphetamine in a club wall?! Well, at least I'll be high enough to laugh about this later.

The crowd erupted in nonsensical gibberish again, this time with a few screams. As the disturbed powder began to clear itself out of the air, the man I'd slung into the wall screamed and ran backwards, falling down in his haste to get away from the wall. A grey, powder-dusted form was leaning against the back of the external panels. His long black hair was ratty and matted, his skin sickly pale and had a shine. His clothes were rotting away and his eyes were sunken and looked like they'd been covered with thick cream. Ew.

"No way!" I exclaimed, moving to get a better look. "Bloody hell! It's a modern mummy!" Oh, yeah. Did I mention it was a corpse?

* * *

><p>Booth sighed again as Special Agent First insisted on following himself and Tessa into the club, which had been evacuated by first responders to the nine-one-one call. "Are you sure they can handle this?" First asked for the second time, reluctant to take Booth's word for it.<p>

Booth sighed, glaring up at the agent. "No one in our lab knows the first thing about dealing with a mummy. I'd have to call her in anyway, and the other would end up being requested by the squints, if the last weeks are anything to go by."

"She assaulted two agents who were trying to tape off the body, and she had a knife," First explained with a raised eyebrow, highly doubting the sanity of the person in question. He pointed over at Booth's former ward, who had her arms crossed and was shouting at a CSI to stay away from the remains. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes were dilated. Her hair was lighter than normal due to a thin dusting of white powder.

"They were trying to compromise the remains," Bones defended Holly, hearing the accusatory tone First used.

First rolled his eyes to Booth. "A cloud of meth covered the dance floor." He pointed with one hand at Brennan and with the other at Holly. "I think they've inhaled quite a lot."

Booth smiled despite the situation. "Are you three high?" He asked. He'd been surprised enough that Angela had convinced both Bones and Holly to go to a club with her, but they got high, too?

Angela was leaning against the wall, out of the way of the crime scene team. She sighed and rubbed her forehead, tired and with a headache. "Only by accident, so it doesn't count."

Holly left the agents that she was having a fit at abruptly, turning her attention back to Booth and his girlfriend. She crossed the space between them with fast, small steps, swaying slightly on her feet when she came to a stop. "Why'd you bring Tessa?" She asked, lacking the usual inhibitions she held to crossing personal boundaries. "This doesn't seem like such a good idea for a date."

Tessa was straightforward, although she seemed mildly interested in meeting Holly after having to tolerate Booth watching over her for two weeks. "We were out to dinner when he got your call." She seemed distracted as she peered into Holly's wide, inquisitive eyes. "Your pupils are the size of saucers," she said uneasily.

Brennan left Booth and Tessa to run over to another officer. "Wait, get away from the remains!"

Booth, amused, shook his head. "Bones, simmer down!"

Two men walked around the crime scene tape. "How long is this going to take?" The first asked Booth impatiently. They were both African-American with short dark hair. They both wore suits, although the first's wasn't as nice.

Booth glared at them. This was a crime scene with a dead body, and they were impatient half an hour into the investigation? "Who the hell wants to know?"

The second man, holding a cane, tapped it on the ground in front of the first one's feet. "I'm sorry. He works for me. I'm Randall Hall. I run this place."

"You run this place, Mr. Hall?" Booth repeated suspiciously. "Interesting, you know, because we found some drugs on-"

"Found them," Holly repeated from behind him, nodding in complete seriousness. "We found them."

Booth watched her for a minute before shaking himself out of it. _I can't really blame her for acting weirdly, she's high on meth. _"Alright, we found some drugs on the dead guy. We're going to want to know where they came from, why he had them-"

"Why," Holly nodded, embellishing her repetition of Booth's words by crossing her arms and trying to look tough. Stumbling and with red cheeks and wide, glazed eyes, she wasn't getting near the effect she usually was.

Booth gave Holly a look for her to stop before continuing. "…Why he had them. Any idea who he is?" Booth pointed off to the side at the mummy in the wall.

"Any-" Holly started, but Booth patiently looked back at her and gave her a calm 'really?' look. Holly stopped in the middle of her sentence and turned away, letting Booth get the message across on his own.

Hall was smug and arrogant when he replied flippantly. "The guy barely looks human. What makes you think I'd recognize him?"

Booth shook his head, tired, and turned around to see Brennan leaning over the mummified corpse, interestedly observing with utter fascination. "Bones, how does something like that happen?"

Bones didn't even bother correcting him on the nickname. She casually grabbed the arm of an officer who was getting too close to the remains for her liking and twisted it behind his back. Nothing strange there. "Well, the Egyptians would give the body a cedar oil enema and then rinse it with wine and cover it with salt, but I don't think that's what happened here."

Booth laughed. "Bones, you are totally wasted!"

Bones turned away from the mummy, presumably to form a coherent response to his comment, but saw Zach coming to the scene. Her eyes lit up and she ran over to him, rushing at him like a freight train and grabbing his arm, leading him eagerly to the mummy. The intern let himself be pulled along, uncertain, and a little nervous to pull away.

"Zach! Zach!" Holly bounced on her heels and pointed frantically at the cadaver while Brennan pulled him to it. "Come here!" Brennan put her hands on Zach's shoulders and started steering him directly to the mummy while Holly excitedly continued. The presence of more people she was in favor of enthused her. "Isn't this awesome?"

Zach sent wary looks to each of the oddly-behaving women. "What's going on?"

Booth covered his face with his hand for a moment. "Let's just say they inhaled."

"See how perfectly dried and preserved the skin is?" Brennan asked happily, pointing at the corpse. "You don't find something like this every day. Hey Tessa, have you seen it?" Tessa didn't reply, uncomfortably trying to ignore the question.

Angela rocked back and forth unsteadily. "It's so hard to believe that you two would be a couple," she slurred, pointing between Booth and Tessa repeatedly. "I mean, cop and lawyer. It's very touching!"

Tessa sighed. "I'm going to get a cab."

Booth groaned. "Oh, no. Okay, hold on-" He handed her a ten dollar bill for taxi fare. "Sorry, sorry. I apologize. Here," he took her hand. "I'm going to make it up to you, I promise. Okay? Ice cream later?" He offered. "Take care."

Tessa nodded, smiling slightly at him. "I'll talk to you later."

"Talk to you later," Booth called as she retreated. When he looked back, Angela, Bones, and Holly were all giving him silly grins.

"Aww!" They all exclaimed simultaneously.

Booth glowered. "Can we just stick to the business here?" He asked, sulkily. Holly nodded in disappointed acceptance. "Thank you." He turned back to the club's manager. "I'm going to need a list of your employees. We'll run it through the system and see if any one of them have a drug conviction. Bones, how long before you can ID him?"

Brennan clapped her hands. "Well, I'm not at all tired, so I'm sure I can stay up all night and work!" She declared, her demeanor hyperactive. "Holly, do you want to come?"

"Yes please!" The teen chirped happily.


	18. The Man in the Wall, Part Two

As the methamphetamine high wore off, I was getting somewhat of a hangover as Angela, Brennan, Hodgins, and I all examined the mummified corpse on the exam table. I felt like someone was hitting a sledgehammer against my temples in an attempt to make my skull as difficult to identify as Cleo Eller's.

Hodgins was laughing at the three of us mirthfully. "Crystal meth is made from cold medicine, lye, and the strike pads from matchbooks." He knocked the bottom of a stack of paper against the steel edge of the table to straighten the papers as he smirked, enjoying himself quite a bit too much. "The body was not designed to deal with that kind of assault."

"So I'm finding out," I nodded, yawning tiredly and pushing away the strain on my weary muscles in favor of making accurate discoveries.

Hodgins smiled more sympathetically. "Chamomile tea?" He offered. "It's very soothing."

"No, I just need your results," Brennan denied.

Hodgins scoffed. "How about a stick to pry the monkey off of your backs?" He suggested, getting leveled with a dangerous glare from Angela, Brennan, and I. Hodgins flinched back and let the subject drop in favor of spending more time alive.

Angela was resting in a chair with her elbow resting on the table and the heel of her palm supporting her head. There were dark circles under her eyes. "Are you all sure you need me here right now?"

Brennan huffed slightly. "Payback for showing me 'the good life.'"

The security system beeped once as Booth slid his relatively-new pass card and bounded up the few stairs simply. "Okay!" He exclaimed, unnaturally cheerfully – oh, wait. He was acting normal. It was me that was hung over from chemicals that had the potential to kill me stone dead. "How's King Tut doing?"

"Why must you refer to our victim by the term used to identify an ancient Egyptian King? And if it's simply because you insist on being a silly jokester, then maybe you should at least say the full name." I asked, complaining just to relieve the tension building in my head.

"Because I don't know the full name," Booth said, spreading his arms like I as giving him my best attack. "No one knows the full name."

"King Tutankhamen," Brennan, Hodgins, and I all said in synchrony, giving Booth incredulous looks.

Hodgins shook it off. "The meth found in his lungs and nasal passages matches the meth that totally juiced Angela, Xena, and the good doctor here," he smirked at Brennan as he passed his report to her over the modern mummy.

"Can you please keep it clinical?" Brennan asked, her own hangover making her a bit snappish as she grabbed the report.

"He died of an overdose?" Booth guessed, trying to scrape up what he could from our immature, drug-induced squabbling.

Brennan started to open up the report, but her exhaustion made her clumsy and several pages fell out of her grasp and fluttered to the floor. Booth bent down to pick them up for her and I corrected him while he did so. "Actually, asphyxiation. Meth clogged up his lungs and he suffocated, in terms simple enough for you to understand the first time."

Booth blinked. "So he overdosed with his meth behind the wall," he repeated.

Hodgins shone his little LED pen light at the mummy's sunken cheek. "The space was too narrow for him to squeeze through. He got stuck, the bag broke, and when he gasped for air, he inhaled and died instantaneously."

"Dry air convection behind the wall removed most of the moisture from his body," Brennan completed Hodgins' recreation of the events. "Evidence suggests that he was in the wall for approximately six weeks."

Booth rubbed his hands together, hearing her, but also distracted by his observation of the corpse. "Didn't he used to have hands?" He asked, pointing at a severed limb with a disgruntled expression.

I groaned lowly in my throat. "Oh, you're going to regret you asked."

Five minutes later, Brennan, Booth, and I were in one of the smaller lab rooms. It was cluttered with equipment that had been sterilized and put away neatly, but I wasn't too interested. If I focused on looking at one thing for too long, everything kind of blurred. The severed hand of our mummified body was floating in a water-filled jar with the top screwed tightly on.

I held up the jar with a slightly dizzy smile. "Hey, look. Someone, take a picture and post it online. Tell the internet I got it from Cardiff's BBC base. You know, Doctor Who? _The Christmas Invasion, Utopia, Journey's End_? And the metacrisis Doctor? I mean, one David Tennant was hot enough, with two, I was surprised no televisions were lit on fire!"

Brennan shook her head at me very slightly, looking up at Booth. "I don't understand what she's talking about."

Booth clapped his hands together sarcastically. "She's being a normal teenager and saying that an actor is very attractive while making references to a weird science fiction TV show."

"Oh. Angela does that a lot, too," Brennan said, nodding and smiling with relief that I wasn't going insane. If I ever go insane, I really hope I don't end up hearing drums in my head all of the time. Although, I have to _hand _it to John Simm (see what I did there?) – he pulled off the 'insane psychopath' act pretty damn well. The anthropologist took the hand-in-a-jar away from me and set it down on the counter, slowly trying to unscrew the lid. "They're easier to work with dismembered. I've rehydrated them so we can get some fingerprints," she explained to Booth as she pried the lid up carefully.

"Off of that?" Booth coughed, queasily grimacing.

"Yes," Brennan clarified calmly.

The scientist reached into the jar and lifted the hand up gingerly, taking care not to damage any of the tissue. Booth squeamishly looked away, averting his eyes obviously, and talking about something seemingly random. "Have you ever been to Costa Rica?"

Brennan talked distantly. "I was flown down once. They found a human skull twelve thousand years old." She worked the tips of her fingers under the severed point of the skin, loosening the ashen skin from the firm muscle tissue. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't for my own morbid fascination. "Why?"

Booth shrugged, staring deliberately up at the ceiling. Because it's just so fascinating, of course! "I'm finally getting some vacation time. I was going to head off on Thursday. I heard Costa Rica was beautiful."

"Yes," Brennan agreed. "There is fascinating wildlife. Lots of parrots." She began pulling lightly at the fingers and the loosened skin tissue began to slide off, like the seal from a band aid (which is a surprisingly accurate analogy).

Booth cringed, disapproval ringing in his tone. "Oh, I don't like parrots. People should really, really do all of the talking. Hey, maybe I should-" he chanced a glance at us to make sure we were paying attention, but lurched backwards and gagged as Brennan began to stretch the skin around her own hand, cautiously working her latex-glove-covered hand into the skin slip. "Oh, God! What are you doing?!"

Brennan didn't seem to find it odd, so I helpfully quipped, "Aztec soldiers would slay their opponents and then wear their skin over their own as bodysuits. Creepy but cool in an abhorrent way at the same time."

Booth's eyes fluttered shut. He looked sick. "I guess you won't be needing mittens for Christmas, huh, Bones?" Brennan ignored him, instead looking down at the fingerprint software. She pressed the skin slip's index finger against the screen and a green light glowed across the grid in a vertical line as it processed.

* * *

><p>"Was there a match?" I asked, yawning widely and covering my mouth with the sleeve of my sweater.<p>

Angela's screen opened a new window as the exhausted artist nodded, her head rocking a bit more than normal. "Yep. His name was Roy Taylor." The screen had a basic government profile and a driver's license photograph was highlighted underneath the facial profile. "Also known as Deejay Mount."

"I don't know who that is," Brennan said, beating me to it.

Angela's eyebrows went up, like she wasn't at all surprised. "Mount is one of the best deejays in D.C.. He used to play at the club. Everyone was wondering what happened to him… I guess his album will really take off after this."

I stifled another yawn. It was nearing five in the morning now and I couldn't believe my luck that Booth had agreed to have more paperwork filed, excusing me from my job again. Otherwise, I'd look like hell at work. Angela sent a concerned look at me. "Are you okay, sweetie?" She asked kindly. "I was just about to go sleep for a few hours. You can probably use the decontamination facilities to shower if you ask the security at the lab entrance for an escort to the chemical or autopsy labs. From there, there's not a passcode to get to the decontamination showers, and when you're done you can dry off and take a nap up on that other platform on the second level," she offered.

I blinked slowly. "Yeah," I said, nodding to myself. I asked Booth and Brennan if it was okay if I went and took care of myself for the next five hours (figure fifteen minutes to get to decontamination facilities from here and get a guard escort and towel, half an hour to shower and get all of the meth out of my hair, and another fifteen minutes to dry off and fall asleep, then four hours to sleep), and they said it was fine and they'd wake me up only in five hours unless there was an emergency. So I thanked Angela and took off (my hair was starting to get all nasty from the drugs).

* * *

><p>At a little past ten, I woke up on my own from the rap music that I followed back to Brennan's office. I felt much more refreshed, not to mention clean, now that I was methamphetamine-free. Brennan was looking through files in her office while Booth hung out when I found them. "Angela said rap artists sometimes kill each other over their music," Brennan said matter-of-factly.<p>

"Oh, of course," I said sensibly, getting their attention. I smirked. "People kill for less, and… well… Let's just say that, considering my social status and societal ranks, my intelligence being what it is is like a miracle." I know that that's probably not that accurate, but I'd met several deejays over my years, and none of them had been able to solve a system of linear equations. Or even know what the word 'antidisestablishmentarianism' meant.

Brennan nodded her head slightly with the music. "Listen," she instructed Booth and I, mildly entertained. "You can hear the alpha male asserting himself."

Booth made a face as he listened for a moment before repeating one of the most senseless and vulgar phrases he heard. "Of course… always a nice lyric."

Brennan lifted her lightweight jacket up from the back of her desk chair. "I'm going back to the club to meet the FBI forensics team." She switched a button on her CD player and the music stopped. "I'm getting facts. Holly, you are welcome to come with me."

"That's my cue," I said to Booth, shrugging.

I swear I could feel the FBI agent's eyes following me as I left, turning my back to him and following the anthropologist out of her office. Although not a word had been said as of yet about it, I knew Booth wouldn't just forget all of the marks he'd seen on me. I lied to him, said that that was the worst of it… and yet, still, anyone who's got a heart wouldn't be able to just stop thinking about it when someone they interacted with proved to them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they'd been hurt, emotionally and physically marked, by people that swore to love and protect them.

Booth honestly didn't seem like the type of person to judge people on things out of their control, and I'm usually a pretty good judge of character. Still… that vulnerable side of me was something I tried to keep tucked away under a locked door at all costs, and that Booth now knew about it, and he'd possibly told others… it just didn't feel right.

* * *

><p>"Was it fun coming to the club?" Zach asked. Like a normal person, he hadn't been in the lab at four in the morning. He was just now meeting us at the club with the forensics unit. We were all… ugh… in the wall, not far, but enough to be able to say we were 'in the wall,' trying to find evidence that could explain why the popular deejay thought that the wall was where the 'kool kidz' hung out. Personally, I think that if they spell 'cool kids' with a k and a z then they're more like the 'stupid kids', but whatever.<p>

Zach was reaching in first, holding some sort of image scanner, and Brennan followed, carrying a screen that displayed the results of Zach's scans. I was staying a distance away from them both because I'd assured them that if a spider got on me, then they'd wish it was another dead body instead. The FBI agent (First, right?) was hovering, having a little more trouble fitting through with his broad frame. Zach was pretty small and Brennan and I were both women, so while it was pretty close quarters, it wasn't enough to induce claustrophobia.

"Oh, yes. I love being attacked by idiots, doused with meth that gives me hangover, and finding dead bodies. I can't wait to do it again sometime," I sighed sarcastically.

"It seems so primitive," Zach shared, moving slowly in case the scanner picked up anything. "Being in a crowd of strangers and gyrating to music."

"You've never danced?" Brennan looked to Zach in earnest surprise.

Zach shrugged. He didn't seem like he thought he was missing out on much. I couldn't say I disagreed. "I've been told I look like a marionette in a windstorm."

"You would have fit right in last night," Brennan chuckled.

Zach brightened and looked away from his scanner to look at his boss. "Really?"

Brennan ignored him, instead focusing on the screen from the scans. "There are footprints in the dirt, and termite shavings. Someone was on the other side of him."

Zach craned his neck down the side of the paneling. "Light," he reported. "This leads outside."

"We need to get inside that wall," Brennan told First, expecting him to do something about it.

"Or take it down," suggested a forensics man from the FBI's unit.

"That could possibly compromise evidence." I scowled at the adult in his thirties, at least. "Dude, I thought you were supposed to know what you're doing."

First puffed. "Take them in and show them around," he ordered, not willing to let his inhospitality towards a minor get in the way of a murder investigation.

And that is how, fifteen minutes later, I ended up walking in a wall with Brennan and Zach. This is definitely not a highlight of my life.

"Can we conform to as much forensic protocol as possible?" The forensics man asked pleadingly as I picked up a stick and swatted at a spider's web before continuing.

"Can we play the 'be quiet' game?" I asked in turn. "It's where all of the CSIs have to be quiet and the person who talks first has to go sit in a corner and think about their life thus far."

"We're better at this than you think." Zach sighed at being underestimated once again, but he slowed down slightly to further appease the persistent science agent.

Scuttling and clicking noises made a silent shiver race down my back. It sounded like rodents. "You know what those are?" The forensics guy asked me smugly.

"Rats," I guessed, before realizing that he was probably trying to unnerve me in retribution for being a jerk. "You've got to be kidding. You're trying to scare me with rats? How lame do you think I am? Have you read the papers at all?" I wished the papers would just shut up, but they weren't. After Charles Sanders' investigation, they had found out that I had been the arresting 'officer' of the murderer, and had yet another field day. Luckily for me, not many of the people in my neighborhood were that interested in the paper, but I had no doubt that if a reporter saw me, I'd have a sudden urge to sling him or her into a wall.

I pulled my arms in towards my sides uncomfortably as the dark got more intense. I clicked on my own flashlight and shone it in front of me, lighting up Brennan's back, and then looked to either side. "Careful with the equipment, Zach!" I called helpfully. "The walls are getting narrower." If I stood up completely straight and parallel to the walls, my sweater would graze against the walls.

Zach was holding both a scanner and his own little flashlight, which had so far been illuminating anything that I could trip over. I've got a great sense of depth perception and spatial awareness, so if there was anything large enough to bother me, I remembered where it was and measured how long it took for us to move past it once Zach's light was no longer on it. Zach slowed without warning and I nearly bumped into Brennan, who had to catch herself sharply on the walls to keep from knocking over Zach. Zach straightened out and shone the flashlight at the walls on either side of him. "There are footprints. And marks on the wall, like it's been scraped."

I blinked and moved my flashlight to the wall, angling it so the light ran past the side. I was surprised that we'd missed the evidence quite literally right next to us, but, then again, we'd been looking towards the ground. The metallic crimson of dried blood smeared the wall to my right. "Blood! We can try to get some scrapings and get them to Dr. Hodgins for DNA analysis."

"I see something," Brennan called, angling her flashlight down by some pipes. I couldn't see what was catching her attention because we were at different angles. "Can I retrieve?"

The forensics guy wasn't very frosty anymore; I think he actually shivered as he looked away from the blood on the wall. "Yeah," he said, knocked off his game by the disturbing picture beginning to form. He handed Brennan an evidence bag from a dispenser around his waist.

Brennan turned it inside out and used it to pick up whatever it was she'd seen before pulling the seal opening back over it and zipping it tightly shut. I shone my light through the translucent bag. It was a little charm shaped like a heart with dried blood on it.

"Ooh," I said, smirking. "Looks like someone may have just unintentionally given us a means of identifying another person."

* * *

><p>Brennan had the charm she'd found resting in a shallow grey tin for examination. The better light showed that the charm had ripped off flesh, not just been the unlucky makeshift bandage for a cut, and appeared to be jewelry. I didn't know what kind for sure; I'm not big on the jewelry front, but I had next to no doubt Angela would be able to identify it.<p>

"So apparently there's a rivalry between Mount and this guy, a deejay by the name of Rules." Booth said, not paying much attention to Brennan's little jewelry examination. I leaned against the rail casually, my back angled at the wall of the domed-shape Medico-Legal lab.

"He was at the club last night," I recalled, sharing conversationally. "I remember because I thought about how he probably spelled it with a Z just to seem cool, when really it just makes him seem illiterate. Did you bring him in for questioning?"

"Ah, no," Booth said, looking up at the ceiling. I don't blame him, it's just so fascinating. "I don't have enough yet. I go in too soon, then he could run."

Angela smiled, not too affected by the morbid lab as she slid her keycard and joined us on the exam platform. Seeing Brennan squinting and working, she veered over to her friend to curiously watch over her shoulder. "Wow. Now that is a beautiful piece. Is it zirconium or a diamond?"

Brennan frowned down at the charm. "I'm a bit more focused on the dried blood and flesh at the moment."

Angela sighed like now would be a very good time to declare 'woe is me.' She looked to Booth suddenly, her eyes sparkling lively. "Do you buy _Tessa _jewelry?" She asked, prodding around happily.

Booth rolled his eyes to mask discomfort with annoyance. "I really don't want to talk about that right now."

Angela nodded, humming in understanding. "Too much of a commitment," she said sympathetically. "I just thought, because you two were going away-"

"You're going away somewhere? With Tessa?" I asked Booth suddenly, taken by surprise. I'm surprised that I didn't lose my balance and fall right back down backwards over the railing and off of the platform. I lifted my hands to make frantic 'wait' gestures. "Seriously? You are going on vacation with a beautiful, sexy lawyer?" A stupid grin grew on my face. "Something tells me you'll want to get this wrapped up before the weekend officially starts."

Booth glared at the floor. "Do you have anything yet?" He demanded crossly of Brennan, sulking.

Brennan exhaled slowly, leaning back and uncurling her body. "Given the rate of air convection and the degree of dehydration of the flesh, I'd say they were there at the same time."

Angela cringed, looking down at the charm with pity. "It must hurt like hell to get that thing ripped out of your belly button."

Brennan looked up at Angela, put off. "I thought it was an earring."

"Look at the size of the stud!" Angela clucked. "I had one of these before they became totally Miami divorcee."

Hodgins triumphantly clanked a glass jar on the table by Brennan's tin, grinning, satisfied, as he slipped the security card back down the neckline of his lab coat. "Good news. I was able to pull some particulates."

"Uh, are those…" Booth squirmed uneasily.

"Eyeballs?" Hodgins supplied with a devilish smirk at Booth's discomfort. "Yeah. Two types of foreign materials were in the eyes – low density polyethylene residue and methamphetamine crystals."

"Polyethylene?" I repeated, narrowing my eyes in concentration. "The bag the meth was in?" Hodgins nodded.

Brennan flagged down another forensics technician and held her examination tin gently but firmly, careful not to drop it. "This can be cleaned now," she said, handing off the tray before returning to the examination table with Roy Taylor's body.

Angela sent a wistful look at the technician as he carried the jewelry off for cleaning and inconclusive analysis. "Yep, that's a real diamond." She looked back to Booth. "Hey, why don't you get a belly button ring? That's not that much of a commitment."

"Yeah, that's great," Booth said shortly, although it was clear he was just saying it so the matter would be dropped.

"The inside of the lips were damaged by the teeth. This was not an accidental inhalation," Brennan said, her voice carrying surprise at the realization. "The methamphetamine was pushed against his face with force. Someone was trying to smother him."

"Which would explain how the meth got into his eye. I mean, I'm not a druggie or anything, but I'm pretty sure that that is not how you get high." I said smartly.

"So he didn't O.D.," Angela confirmed, sighing down at the body sadly. "He was murdered."

"So we need to find out who owns that belly button ring." Booth said, relieved that now we had a solid lead to follow.

Angela leaned over the technician's shoulder, watching him carefully clean the heart-shaped charm patiently, then brightened. "Hey, this ring's got an engraving. It says 'Luv Rules.'"

Hodgins quirked an eyebrow at Booth. "Well, at least you know who to ask first."

* * *

><p>Hip hop has never really been my favorite type of music, although I don't particularly dislike it. There are few genres of music I actually dislike; if I don't like a song, it's probably more because of the lyrics. But there was something irritating about the song playing on medium volume in the deejay's studioloft as we stepped in. I guess I can just attribute it to the meth hangover's brutal treatment of my head.

I looked around. The studio was sort of plain. There were some shelves around the plainly painted walls with bookends supporting thin cased CDs and a counter with a little bell to ring for service, but there was no one actually in the shopping area. The floor, linoleum tile, was a dark tan that was a kind of nice color to look at.

Towards the back, behind the counter, was a door marked 'personnel.' I shrugged and approached, making my way nimbly around the counter and trying not to focus on many different things at once. I have a feeling it'll be a few hours until I can do that again. Brennan started browsing the music CD selection and Booth tapped a few keys on the cash register while I knocked. "Hello! Visitors!"

"Yeah. It's open," a masculine voice lazily called from inside.

I reached down to the doorknob and twisted, pushing forwards harder than necessary. "Would you look at that, it really is open," I said to the figure who was in the rotating chair. He wore jeans that were way too loose and his feet were kicked up on his desk. He was looking over the back of a CD and almost completely ignoring the three of us.

"FBI Special Agent Booth," Booth said authoritatively, agreeing with the intimidation tactic.

The man slowly brought his legs down off of the desk and sat up, turning to angle himself to face us. Booth passed me and went to the man's side, his arms crossed, while Brennan and I hung out near the door. The guy scoffed when he looked past Booth and saw us. "What, is the FBI recruiting from America's Top Model now?"

"I'm a forensic anthropologist at the Jeffersonian," Brennan corrected, not grasping the thinly-veiled slight.

I, however, got it. "I'm in allegiance with the Jeffersonian. Why, hoping for a date to America's Got Talent?" Brennan gave me a look of confusion. I just shook my head slightly at her, conveying that I was defending us. She nodded slightly, understanding that it hadn't been a completely random comment.

"They work for the FBI," Booth said sharply.

The deejay, whose face matched the picture of Deejay Rules/Rulz (whatever) nodded, not giving an air of unease. "Yeah, I can live with that."

"Dr. Brennan and Miss Kirkland also discovered that Roy Taylor was murdered," Booth continued.

Rules just kept reading the copyright information in the fine print at the bottom of the case. "So?"

Booth crossed his arms, shaking his head very slightly. Who says 'so' when you say someone they knew was murdered? _Apparently this guy. _"So," Booth emphasized, "Murder is whacked, see, because those are the _rules, _Rules."

Rules chuckled softly to himself, standoffishly not bothering to respect us enough to look up from the CD case. "Well maybe he had it coming to him."

"So you and Roy Taylor didn't get together to shoot hoops, I take it," I said, rolling my eyes. Would it kill him to show a little respect? We didn't want to be here, either, and if he was completely cooperative we'd probably be gone in five to ten minutes.

"That sucker ran me down," Rules laughed derisively. "Tried to slam me in one of his tracks, and ain't nobody do that."

"You have horrible grammar," Brennan informed him, making a face of distaste.

"Sounds like he was pretty awesome. It's a worthwhile tactic to insult in a popular song," I acknowledged. "So what happens when they do knock you off your high pedestal, your holiness?" I asked, smothering my voice in sarcasm.

Rules gave me a long look, like he was measuring me up. On one hand, I was working with the "feds." On the other hand, I obviously understood how things worked for his social class via firsthand experience. "I take a piece of them," he finally answered, drawing his eyes off of me. I felt somewhat violated by how long he'd been staring. _Creep. _"I got in his face one night at the Basement and I told him to disappear, and I haven't seen him since, 'cause he knew to follow the Rules."

I sighed loudly. That joke has to be funny to begin with in order to get old!

Booth laughed lowly, although it was so obviously fake it was nearly funny. "And maybe your girlfriend just made sure that your problem went away." He lifted the heart charm up in a sealed evidence bag for the deejay to take in.

"That ain't my woman no more. I kicked her sorry ass out months ago," Rules dismissed.

"And what is her name?" I demanded, getting fed up. I strode over to his spinning chair, grasped the back firmly, and yanked it to the side. The chair spun and Rules was jerked around to face us. I used my foot to stop the chair in place once I was satisfied with its position. "Look, Romeo, I'm not sure you understand what's happening here. We're what you'd call feds. You're what we call a murder suspect. So when this sort of thing happens, the murder suspect behaves himself and answers our questions with at least fifty percent of the respect that our colleagues give us, or else I get angry and start slapping them around a bit. Now, to be in this business, no matter your illiteracy, you still must understand the way crime works. Someone was killed, and you're going to answer our questions or we'll bring you in for questioning in a much less hospitable environment. If you don't want to answer, well, then, lawyer up, but have the decency to look at us when you insult us. There aren't any hip hop concerts in prison, so take my advice and do as you're told."

"Her name was Eve Warren," Rules said, looking up at me almost languidly. I glared back at him. "What's yours?"

Oh, no. He's one of _those _guys, that think that a girl threatening them is hot. "I will destroy you. Slowly. What was Eve doing with deejay Mount?"

"Take a guess," Rules scoffed. "I guess it was just his turn."

"Yet she kept your ring."

"It's a diamond. Why would she go get rid of that?"

"Where would she be now?"

"Probably ripping somebody else off. That girl don't care 'bout nobody but herself. You know she got a kid? She don't care about her, neither, just let her brother shoulder that. Bitch."

"What happened to your hand?" Brennan interrupted. I took several steps back to Brennan's side now that Rules was cooperating. The intimidation factor rarely fails me. Rules' wrist was in a supporting cast that had been concealed by his sleeve until I'd started jerking him around. Brennan had noticed before I had.

"I got shot through the wrist a few years ago," Rules answered straightly. _Good dog._

Brennan tilted her head, taking in the position and style of the cast. "Shattered the lower radius and the pisiform?"

"Yeah. I got some nerve damage, too," Rules added offhandedly.

Booth shot Brennan a look. He clearly wanted to know why it was important, and thought that Brennan was straying off topic. But he wasn't going to tell her off in front of the rude deejay; that would ruin the 'Good Cop-Bad Cop' that I had started, where if he behaved he was given space and patience, but if he didn't, then he'd get told off by me. Brennan caught the look and extended her arm toward Rules as if further displaying him to Booth. "It's impressive!"

Rules stood up hopefully. "I got shot in the back and through the leg too, you want to see the scars?" One of his hands fisted around the hem of his shirt.

"Leave the clothes on," I ground out, resisting the urge to hit my face with my hand.

"Thanks anyway," Booth said, moving to the side and back towards the door. He made eye contact with me and I inclined my chin to show I understood; we were leaving before things got bad, so if we needed to question the deejay again, he wouldn't be hostile. "Let us know if you hear from Eve."

"I like this music," Brennan told me softly, her head bobbing slightly to the drumbeat of the hip-hop drifting from the speakers.

"The CDs weren't very expensive," I told her helpfully. Her eyes darted to Booth, who was halfway out of the lobby, to a shelf of music CDs.

* * *

><p>"Okay, how about this? Deejay Mount trusted Eve because they were sleeping together, so she meets him in the wall, takes the drugs, kills him for Rules, and then he takes off."<p>

Brennan smirked. "You should write fiction," she told him, not amused by the speculation.

"What?" Booth's jaw dropped, affronted. "It's reasonable!"

"It's not based on evidence. It's conjecture."

"Look, I'm positing a scenario. We've been through this before!"

I sighed quietly to myself, watching the city of Washington D.C. fly by outside the window of Booth's SUV. It seemed like our vehicle – No, Booth's vehicle; I won't be around much longer – had its own little storm cloud of misery hanging above it. Everyone outside (the cute couples sharing April ice cream, the kids skateboarding to and from a park, and the seniors playing checkers or bird watching or supervising children) was having a good day, while I was in here, listening to Booth and Brennan argue pointlessly, just because they didn't see eye to eye. Booth wasn't a man of science; it didn't take a fool to see that. Brennan was empirical and her life revolved around facts and trust in her friendships when she went out on a limb. Sometimes they got along because they were united in the goal to save lives; but when they didn't, they argued over the smallest things, and it wasn't pretty.

"Yes, and it always seems to be a waste of time," Brennan argued patiently. "Now, finding a marker on a bone, on the other hand-"

"You know, I think I need a vacation," Booth interrupted, taking deep breaths. His knuckles were white as he held on tightly to the steering wheel. "I think you do, too."

Brennan laughed at the sheer incredulity of Booth's suggestion. "Well, I'm not the one who's snippy."

"Snippy?" Booth chuckled derisively. "What are you, seventy?"

"I see her point," I mumbled.

"I think you should find a nice, relaxing place to go on that vacation." Booth groaned as Brennan's calm demeanor allowed her to quickly transition from bickering to considering ways for Booth to relax and leisurely loosen up. "Somewhere where you can get a massage, and maybe do some yoga."

"I don't do yoga," Booth denied flatly. "Pushups, sit ups, pull ups, that's what I do."

Brennan took this as a type of question. "Yes, but that's more cardiovascular. Yoga deals more with-"

"Why are we talking about this?" Booth questioned, moaning in boredom.

"Because you're tense."

"Because we're talking."

"Well, that's rude," I shared my opinion, but no one seemed to care.

Booth reached over to the radio and hit the on button, then changed the settings from FM to CD. Hip hop with a heavy bass line started to flow out of the stereo system. Booth blinked down at the system in confusion, glanced back at the road, and then sent an accusatory look at Brennan. "You switched my music!" He sounded like this was a felony that he couldn't believe she would dare to commit.

Ugh. Boys and their toys.


	19. The Man in the Wall, Part Three

** "****Roy Taylor?" I guessed, grabbing some latex gloves from a sterile cart and blowing into them to stretch out the rubber. Zach looked up briefly from the now clean bones laid in anatomical order on the exam table of the bone room.**

** "****Yes."**

**I shrugged to myself. I expected as much. "Notice anything new without the flesh?"**

**Zach moved back slightly and to the side, pointing at an area on the cervical vertebrae at an angle so that I could see, too. "There's some damage to the facet joint and foramen on C-4 on the right side of the neck."**

**I hummed a few notes of a song that had been on one of Brennan's new CDs. Music has always helped to ground me, and though I do so quietly, I hum to myself pretty often when I'm trying to focus. Sometimes I don't even realize it – as when I'd been singing lowly to Madonna on the Olivos case. "That suggests that his head was forced that way, which is consistent with the conclusion of another person in the wall with him."**

**Zach nodded, but continued quickly, like he thought he would lose my attention. "One other thing – I was looking at the skull through the microscope. I came across a slight depression. It's barely discernable."**

** "****A slight indentation?" I repeated.**

** "****It could be congenital or a bone anomaly. I plan on asking Dr. Brennan to take a look."**

**I nodded. That seemed like a plan. As far as the differentiation between the two goes, I don't really know quite what to look for. It's not like I see skeletons all the time, although admittedly I have been seeing more in the last month than I have ever before. No surprise there, huh? "Do you mind me asking if you go on vacation?" I asked, nearly timid. It was kind of a personal thing to get into (or at least, it seemed like it), but when Brennan and Booth had been arguing, it made me wonder what the normal rate of vacations is for people. Because I don't really get them, except sometimes we have more help so I'm given a few hours off, at most a day.**

** "****I do not mind." I let out a small breath I hadn't even known I'd been holding. "I take my vacation when Dr. Brennan takes hers. Do you have vacations?"**

**I blinked. It seemed like he was trying to make conversation, because from what I understood, he would usually just answer and leave it at that. "Not really. Sometimes I get a little time off, if the bar isn't understaffed. I usually just read or attend seminars. What do you do?" I returned the thought.**

** "****I go back home to Michigan to see the family. I have three brothers and four sisters."**

**I looked down. I wished I could relate to that. Okay, so maybe I could deal without the seven siblings, but it would be nice to at least have a person or people to belong with. "Big family. Do you have fun?"**

** "****God, no," Zach said quickly, shuddering. "I made the mistake of telling them I work with corpses and skeletons. They think I'm a freak."**

** "****You're not," I said sharply. I knew firsthand what a freak was, and I also knew how it felt to be classified as one. Even from strangers, it can hurt. Sure, it makes me mostly angry or irritated, but if it'd been from someone I knew closely, someone who was family? It would hurt my feelings! "Generally, in modern society, death is something to be feared and so the study of anything related to it is frowned upon in public. Because when people fear, they sometimes turn that the wrong way and lash out." I paused. Zach knew this; why was I trying to defend him to himself? "If they're mean to you, then why do you go?"**

** "****It's my family," Zach said simply, looking to me with an underlying note of confusion, like he felt that I should understand this. "They love me."**

** "****Right," I said, trying not to sound disappointed. If someone's rude to me, I don't want to see them. But then again, I don't have a family, so I don't know what it's like to be in one. "Sorry. I shouldn't have pushed."**

** "****I require no apology, although the thought to my emotions is appreciated."**

* * *

><p><strong> "<strong>**Work it out! That's right, good, good!"**

**I can honestly never say I thought I'd end up in a hip hop dance class. I wasn't even entirely sure if there were any in DC., but I guess so. Eve Warren's brother, George Warren, taught the classes and the admission fees were his salary. Everyone was wearing tight, short-sleeved shirts and gym shorts. A water dispenser with disposable paper cups was on one side of the room; the water level seemed pretty low. He should refill that. The floors were covered with dark blue exercise mats.**

**George looked up from putting his class through a vigorous routine when we entered. The little bell pinged as the door opened and faded away as it closed behind our trio. "What do you want?"**

**Booth pulled out his badge and displayed it to George Warren with an expression of boredom, looking around the hip hop studio like he wanted to leave. "Special Agent Booth, FBI. These are my associates, Dr. Brennan and Miss Kirkland."**

**Brennan was bobbing her head slightly and watching the dancers with interest. "What do you call this?"**

** "****The Crump," George answered, an expression of pride flitting across his face. "The kids come here and they dance." He paused, surveying Booth. "They don't gangbang, so what do you want? You didn't come here for a dance lesson."**

** "****I think I'd rather drown than wear shorts ****_that _****short," I agreed.**

**George looked like he remembered that his class could hear what we were saying. He shook his head, sighed, and beckoned us with one hand to follow him into an office, most likely his, with the door open. He went in first, bending down to affectionately ruffle the short brown hair of a toddler who was playing with a set of plastic neon blocks on the floor. "Hey, Maya. How're you doing, baby?" He lifted her up, supporting her against his waist, and carried her out of the office. "Come on now, we're going to go outside, and you're going to play with the rest of the kids, okay?" He set Maya down on her feet and she wobbled off to one of the female dancers, who had taken a water break.**

**I watched the child for a moment. That was most likely Eve Warren's kid. How would she handle possibly growing up without a mother or father? Well, at least she had George – for now, anyway – and he seemed willing to care about her.**

** "****I'd like to ask you a few questions about your sister, Eve," Booth started, getting ready to get into the questioning.**

**George sighed. He seemed disappointed, but not surprised. "What has she done now?"**

** "****When was the last time you saw her?" I asked, trying to ease into it. I've been around Booth long enough. A month is long enough to pick up some pointers on tactfulness… right?**

** "****About six weeks ago when she dropped of Maya. Why, is she missing?" Oh. Well, I guess I still can't be subtle.**

** "****Dropped her off and left?" Booth asked.**

**George nodded, rolling his shoulders to work out kinks from his dancing. "She told me she needed me to watch her for a couple of days and left me some money."**

**I nodded. Eve had probably known she was getting mixed up in something, and given her daughter to her brother for her child's safety more than as a way to get high and wasted. Well, that's what I'd like to think, anyway. "Do you happen to have a recent photo?" I asked, glancing back out at Maya as she played with a blonde-haired dancer. "We don't need to take it, but we will need to photograph it so we can print it out."**

**George picked up a small frame from his desk and held it out to me. It was a simple polished wooden frame, with a layer of glass separating the world from the photograph of Eve Warren smiling with Maya in her lap. "Evie said she had cleaned herself up. Said she was turning her life around, and I believed her." George scoffed. "But she never came back. That little girl out there, that's her daughter. She's like a daughter to me, too."**

**I held the picture up for Brennan, who was getting the camera on her phone active to take a picture and then have Angela blow it up and print it off. "Didn't it bother you that Eve never came back? I mean, didn't you go looking for her?" Booth asked George.**

**George shook his head, seeming to become sadder by the minute. "I learned to let her go. Eve, I mean, she's had a lot of problems. Drugs, hanging out with the wrong people." Brennan got the picture and saved it, so I turned back to George and returned the photograph. "If I track her down and she takes Maya before she's ready –" He paused and I nodded, understanding what he meant. Eve wouldn't be stable enough to keep Maya safe and healthy. "I'm not letting anything happen to that little girl."**

** "****Did you know Roy Taylor?" I inquired, changing the line of questioning.**

** "****I met him," George confirmed. "Deejay Mount – I like his stuff. I play it for the kids."**

** "****We have reason to believe that she was with him the night that he was murdered."**

** "****Murdered?" George repeated. I cringed. I shouldn't have been so direct.**

** "****Yeah."**

** "****You can't find Evie?" He confirmed, growing more distressed.**

** "****No," I told him honestly. "But we're working on it."**

** "****Oh, man…" George messed up his hair, brushing it back with his hand. The unkempt look worked for him. "She told me she loved him, and that she and Mount were gonna take Maya out of DC., give her a better life – the one we never had."**

**Brennan, Booth, and I didn't know how to respond to this, so Booth bowed his head in respect for a few seconds before changing the subject. "You said she gave you some cash?"**

**George collapsed back on his chair, slamming his elbow onto the table and supporting his head. He looked dizzy. I looked around for a water bottle, found his travel mug, and handed it to him. "Yeah, for Maya," he answered, his focus not completely on us anymore.**

**Booth withdrew his wallet from his pocket. "I'll buy what you have, two dollars to one."**

** "****Sure, whatever, man."**

**I looked out through the window. Maya was giggling and laughing as the same blonde dancer lifted up the girl and spun her around, laughing with her. She was so incredibly lucky; it was clear just from watching that not only was her brother watching out for her, but that everyone else here had a soft spot for her, too.**

* * *

><p><strong>I made myself comfortable, once again sitting on the top rail of the platform's side railing. I had my hands holding loosely to the rail on either side of me and my heels were pressing against the lowest rail. Hodgins was sitting at his little desk with his Petri dishes, clipboard, and microscope, his eyes pressed to the rubber lenses, while Booth paced across a little ten-foot space on the platform behind the entomologist, ranting about possible scenarios.<strong>

**Hodgins sighed once again as Booth paused to mutter to himself. "You may want the stooges at the FBI, who are experts due to your so-called drug war, to run a comparison. But I'd say the methamphetamine on these bills matches the meth found with deejay Mount behind the wall," the scientist interrupted the agent's pacing, getting irritated with the constant distraction. The difference between Booth and I, even though I was closer to Hodgins, I wasn't incessantly mumbling. I was being quiet.**

**Booth brightened for a moment, his slowed pacing renewed. "My guess is that Eve was with Mount the time that he was murdered. How about this?" As he walked by this time, he clapped Hodgins on the back. It didn't seem like it was meant to be mean, but Hodgins lurched forwards slightly and grimaced. "Deejay Mount rejects Eve because of her questionable past. So, hey, she gets mad, wants to leave with some money, so-" Booth stopped short when he saw the blank stare Hodgins was giving him. "What?"**

**Hodgins gave a seeminly-patient look to the speculative investigator. "Yeah, I don't really think much about that kind of stuff. I'm more about bugs and minerals. Sorry."**

**Booth took on a pleading expression, his eyes widening so he was imitating a very, very large puppy. "Come on, Hodgins. Hey, you're a smart guy!" He encouraged. "You're a smart guy, look up from your microscope, huh? These are real people we're trying to figure out here!" He cooed like he thought he was talking to a dog. Hodgins and I exchanged disturbed glances, but I shrugged and so Hodgins stared at Booth again. "Okay," Booth sighed, giving up.**

**Hodgins rolled his eyes at Booth's disappointment, humoring him so that he would stop pouting. "Maybe she was just using Mount, setting him up so she could get his drugs and money."**

**Booth clapped, his eyes lighting up as the other man played along. "Very nice, Hodgins!"**

**Hodgins lightened up at the praise, grinning slightly and getting caught up in the cheer. "The real question is, where does she go next?"**

**Booth clapped again and pointed at Hodgins excitedly. "You're on fire, man!"**

** "****That would be after she left her brother's place, because then is when she met her untimely end." Hodgins smirked, satisfied with his own conclusions.**

**Booth beamed. "You know what? I'm going to turn you into an investigator yet!"**

**Hodgins looked positively horrified, the smile sliding off of his face faster than I could snap. "No, no, no!" He quickly denied, shooting it down and looking back to his microscope, shaking his head and exhaling deeply, like he'd had a nightmare. "Bugs and slime, dude. That is where I'm happy!"**

* * *

><p><strong>Brennan and I stood side by side with Booth further back in the room. Angela's large computer monitor was emitting a bright orange light as it recreated the events leading to the deejay's murder. Brennan spoke up, adding the commentary as the sequence of events progressed. "The damage to his C-4 vertebra was the result of his head being twisted so far to the right," she said as the glowing figure turned his head to look backwards.<strong>

** "****He was moving this way, toward Eve." Angela rotated the pan of the recreation so that the wall on the inside of the club turned translucent and both figures were visible.**

** "****I think he was chasing her," Booth supplied.**

** "****And that's based on?" Brennan prompted.**

**Booth sighed exaggeratedly. "The money and the meth," he explained crankily. "She left that corridor carrying money saturated in the same meth that killed Mount, and she was moving fast."**

** "****She didn't even stop when her belly ring was ripped out," Angela agreed, wincing.**

** "****Money is a pretty good reason to be chased," I admitted reluctantly, chancing a glance at Brennan. I didn't want her affronted because I was siding with Booth. "Especially when you're not very well-off, financially." I sighed and looked back to the computer, fixing my gaze again. ****_I should know. _****"****But then why wasn't he facing her?"**

** "****It got tight back there," Angela's computer did the calculations based on the blueprints the manager had provided. "Down to fifteen centimeters. Eve ripped out her belly ring here, and then left a smear of blood until the corridor widened down here." The computer simulation showed a darker orange when the blood trail started. I paled and shivered, closing my eyes for a moment.**

** "****Oh, God," Brennan moaned, breathing deeply and looking away.**

** "****What?" Angela asked, looking between Brennan and I in concern.**

** "****That just makes me a little sick," Brennan said, shaking her head to try to brush off the queasiness.**

**Angela watched the color return to Brennan's cheeks, amused. "You pick dead bodies out of mass graves, but yanking a belly ring makes you sick?"**

** "****Moving on, okay?" Booth urged. He had his mouth covered with his hand. "I've shot a lot of people in my time and I have to admit, that whole belly ring thing makes me nauseous, too."**

**Angela shook her head, barely containing a few giggles. "Anyway, at this point, Mount must have looked behind him, but kept going. Then the passageway narrowed, so he couldn't turn back toward Eve."**

** "****So if he couldn't even turn his head, then there's no way Eve could reach past his body to shove the meth in his face. Which means she didn't kill him," I rationalized.**

** "****A third person surprised him, and that's why he turned his head. To look." Booth looked half like he wanted to growl and half like he wanted to smile, now that they'd narrowed down the suspect pool.**

** "****So someone was chasing Eve, but Mount's body prevented the third party from getting to her, so she escaped for the time being. But he did get to Mount, shoved the meth in his face, and killed him, so there'd be no witnesses." I held up my arms, looking back to Booth. ****_Who deserves the badge now, huh?_**

* * *

><p><strong>Booth rolled his eyes at me, refusing to inflate my ego. "But the real question remains; who the hell is this third person?"<strong>

**I smirked over the interrogation table at Oakes, Randall Hall's colleague. Booth had picked him up, having figured out he was undercover, and had now released me on him to make it look to anyone unwise to his disguise like it was a normal interrogation. After all – I was still here, working interrogations, so why suddenly stop for the one person?**

** "****Why the hell did you pick me up, kid?" Oakes demanded roughly, getting fed up with my smug expression. To be fair, he'd lasted a while.**

** "****Aw, you know why we brought you in," I said, pouting at his rudeness. I narrowed my eyes. "Agent Booth gave you an opportunity to contact him and explain yourself, but you didn't do that, and that's rude. So, what are you? DEA? D.C.P.D.? Metro?" I listed off the crime-fighting organizations that were local to the area as they came to my head.**

**Oakes puffed. "Special Agent Ronald Oakes," he corrected pompously.**

** "****FBI," I acknowledged grudgingly. It meant I now had little leverage over him, and when people rubbed me the wrong way, I liked to exercise advantages to make them back down to me. After being attacked in many ways through my life, I like to feel dominant. I don't want to slam people around or anything, but if people seem threatening, feeling like the alpha of the situation just makes me feel more secure.**

**Oakes nodded, pleased that I understood that I couldn't boss him around as much. "My orders were not to break deep cover for anybody. Out of deep regard for my FBI brother, I gave Agent Booth 'the nod.'"**

** "****Oh, yeah," I said, dragging out the vowels sarcastically. "Yep. The nod. It's a universally-recognized gesture symbolizing ****_only _****that someone is undercover. Now cut the excuses, Oakes. Whether or not you like it, I am in the position of authority here. And I know that it must kill you to take orders from a kid, but remember, you ****_don't _****work for the FBI. You're just here for questioning." I grinned inwardly; I could turn his own excuses on him and he couldn't do a damn thing. Score one for Holly.**

**I didn't like the way Oakes was watching me. It wasn't in a perverted way, but he was keeping his cool and seemed to be sizing me up, judging how to manipulate me. He raise his chained wrists slowly and pulled, emphasizing the handcuffs. "You have any keys for these cuffs?"**

**I stared him back, keeping myself calm in turn. I didn't want to give him what he wanted. I discreetly pushed the key further into my pocket, disguising the action by brushing off my jeans. Of course, Booth had taken away his weapon and had given me the key, telling me that sometimes it was okay to take off the cuffs if it was used as a bargaining method. "Nope," I lied blatantly. "Listen, man, you've got to work with us here. We're conducting a homicide investigation, and I need to know whatever it is you know."**

**Oakes dropped his hands, realizing that, even if I was lying, he couldn't do anything about it. Trying to intimidate me would only further enforce the belief that he should be handcuffed. "I'm fifteen months on the task force investigating the links between the urban music business and gang activity."**

** "****And you slithered your way to being Randall Hall's right hand man." My tone gave off the question clearly. ****_Why him? Explain now or you'll be cuffed for a long… LONG… time._**

** "****Randall Hall is a clean alias." Oakes scrutinized me for a reaction. "You ran him, right?"**

** "****No red flags came up when the names of the employees and other allegiances of the club were ran through the system," I said, bored. Where was this going?**

** "****Exactly." Oakes gave a sneaky half smile. He liked knowing more than I did. "His real name is Terrence Baskin. Now we know that he's pushing meth through that club, but we can't get enough to touch him. Our informants disappear, by getting bought off or killed."**

** "****What does that have to do with this murder?" I demanded. Was he wasting my time? If so, I'm going to switch places with Booth and let him lead while I watched from behind the one-way mirror.**

** "****The night that deejay Mount disappeared, Hall got ripped off for a mountain of meth and a ton of cash," Oakes added matter-of-factly.**

**I gave a soft sigh. Now we're getting somewhere. "So the deejay ripped off Hall? And Hall killed the deejay."**

**Oakes chuckled slightly at me. I glowered. "No. Doesn't fit. Mount was into Jesus, not chalk. As for the murder? Hall's people do that type of stuff for him." He sighed, leisurely bringing his closed and bound fists up to the table to rest, pointedly reminding me of the handcuffs. "So, if anybody asked, what did Booth say my cover is?"**

** "****Unlicensed weapons charge," I recited.**

**Oakes laughed shortly. "So I don't get my gun back."**

** "****Not until hell freezes over," I agreed, smiling at him mockingly.**

**Oakes stood up, taking this as his sign that he could leave and go back to booking for the removal of the cuffs and the grant of freedom. "Keeping my cover… if we meet up again, hit me."**

**I brightened, smiling sincerely. "Oh, man. Thanks. You just made my day!"**

* * *

><p><strong>Back in the club, we were in the back office. The rug looked new and the cleanness didn't fit with the environment. I had my suspicions that there might be a particularly morbid reason for that, but I figured it was just paranoia and depression coupling with that I didn't like Randall Hall to begin with. Even when I'd been all doped up on meth and high as a freakin' airplane, he'd bothered me more than Tessa had when she'd gotten all close to me and stared at my eyes just to comment on how dilated my pupils were. I mean, yes, lady, I know I'm intoxicated. <strong>**_Thank you _****for breaching my personal bubble to tell me what I already know!**

**Hall hadn't provoked us into taking him into custody yet, although the longer we were there in the unnecessarily large, furnished office, the more my hands itched to pin him to a wall. The furniture was expensive, which fit with the idea that he was pretty much a drug lord, and the office was more like a one-room apartment with a bathroom back in the corner. I'm pretty sure the guy lives here. Oakes was sitting at a table, reading today's newspaper, with the headline facing us. It was pretty clear he was eavesdropping, since he hadn't turned a page the whole ten minutes since we got here.**

**Speaking of the headline, it appeared that the media still didn't think they'd worn my story enough. Not quite the headline, but an article in bolded font off to the side was stating the now-infamous Holly Elena Emily Anya Kirkland (they were now saving their ink and space by editing my name slightly, so that it was now Holly Emily Kirkland – don't they know that's rude?! I could sue them for misrepresentation!) was working on a federal case once more, even though "eyewitness reports tell us that she had gotten exceedingly violent at the crime scene, threatening a weapon and fighting off attackers, and throwing an unidentified male into the wall, revealing the club as a crime scene." It was really getting old to see my name and picture in the paper. With how much heat I'd been getting lately, I'm beginning to consider giving myself a makeover or something, except without makeup. Then maybe I'd get a break.**

**Hall was laughing at us. He was rude and condescending and, quite frankly, I could understand why someone would want to kill him. I mean, I kind of want to! "I've been investigated for a year. Why do you think they never got me on anything?"**

** "****Because you're a cheating, thieving, conniving, lying, manipulative, insolent, aggravating, homicida – oh. That was rhetorical." I started to guess.**

**Brennan nodded her head to the side slightly like she couldn't help but agree.**

**Hall leveled his gaze at me, sharp and rude. I couldn't help but feel like he was imagining cutting my throat. "No. Because Terrance Baskin is my past. I am one hundred percent clean now. This is my life now, this and my record label. Not crystal meth, not murder, not gangbanging."**

** "****Yet, much of the iconic quality of urban music lies in the perceived or actual rivalry between the principal artists," Brennan pointed out. I smiled dazedly to myself. I'd been wondering where the anthropological facts had gone. I was starting to worry for a little while.**

** "****Not to mention that many of the female buyers of the music like to see when the different artists are pitted against each other. Something about men fighting is supposedly hot and irresistible." I shrugged, disturbed. "Personally, all I think it is is annoying."**

**Hall's lips quirked as he looked to Booth. "Where did you find them?"**

**Booth pointed at Brennan and I in order. "Museum, ghetto bar."**

** "****Oh, that's nice," I responded, rolling my eyes. "Was the rivalry between Mount and Rules strong enough to lead to murder?"**

**Hall shrugged, bored with the questions and our presence. At first he'd been enjoying himself in a pointless way, like he enjoyed playing word games. Now it seemed that, since our patience had mostly run out, he wasn't in the mood for it. "Sure, they were both capable. Add in the fact that Mount was sleeping with Rules's girlfriend, Eve. In fact, Rules build himself a studio around that time. He poured cement for the pad a day after they disappeared."**

** "****So?" Brennan prodded, not getting what the slimy jerk had implied.**

**I turned slightly to Brennan, keeping my voice down as I explained. Since she tolerated me, I felt like I owed it to her to keep her in the loop, even though how she managed to miss that went right over my head. "He's saying he thinks evidence implicates Eve Warren."**

**I raised my volume and cleared my throat. "Alright, hero conference!" I called, snapping my fingers. Brennan looked confused, but I looked from her, to Booth, and then raised my eyebrows, she nodded slightly like she understood. I glared icily at Hall and Oakes. Booth got it to begin with and he moved so Brennan and I were in a close triangle so we could whisper.**

** "****Hero conference?" Really, Booth? That's the first thing you ask?**

** "****Yes. Because we are trying to catch a bad guy, and that's pretty much all superheroes in modern culture are good for. That and wearing their clothing incorrectly."**

** "****I don't understand," Brennan interjected.**

** "****Don't complain, I wish I didn't."**

** "****Look, whatever, can we just wrap this up?" Booth shifted his weight. Hall bothered him almost as much as Hall bothered me. "What do we think?"**

**I sighed, looking back around the rug-covered cement floor before looking back up to my partners in crime. Well, justice. Law enforcement? Hmm, I need to think of a term that sounds catchy with "partners in…". "I think we need a way to find a corpse under cement."**

** "****Can you get a warrant?" Brennan looked to Booth inquisitively.**

**Booth shook his head just barely, a look of helplessness on his face. "For a look around the premises, maybe, but not to tear it up."**

**After a moment of silent thought, a smile slowly grew on Brennan's face. "Let me make a phone call," she requested.**

* * *

><p><strong>Brennan's phone call turned out to be to an officer with a search dog. The large black van's trunk opened with two doors to show the ginger woman's animal, a huge dog that looked like a mastiff or some sort of breed resembling that. The handler, Maggie, had light red hair tied in a messy bun and a dull green vest. She had a leash and collar in one hand, and seemed very affectionate to the dog.<strong>

**Brennan pet the dog's head kindly. "Tootie has traveled the world finding dead bodies."**

**I reached out my hand to the dog, who sniffed it and then nosed my hand up onto his head. He looks big and hulky, but I think he's just an affection-loving puppy who just happens to not be a puppy. At all. Booth watched the dog interact with Maggie, Brennan, and I skeptically. "Does Tootie always drool like that?" He asked uncertainly. Brennan gave him a very fierce glare and the dog whined pitifully. Booth returned Brennan's look. "What, I'm going to hurt his feelings?"**

** "****It would seem that way," I stated simply.**

** "****Tootie is the best cadaver dog in the world, Agent Booth," Maggie defended the canine with a sharp glare at Booth.**

**Brennan nodded, looking up to the investigator as she continued to pet down the dog's flank. "It's true. If you were a dead body, you'd want Tootie looking for you." ****_Actually, if I were a dead body, I wouldn't want anything. You know, seeing as "dead" is the operative word here._**

**Maggie had the dog jump out from the truck and start towards Rules's studio. The dog wore a thin harness with the FBI emblem and a label stating that Tootie was a certified search dog. Maggie let the dog pull her once inside as he sniffed around the new carpeting. He was obviously well behaved. He was calm, task-oriented (as far as I could tell), and Maggie gave the long leash a lot of slack.**

** "****How can it smell anything buried under a building?" Booth asked me, following us all in uncertainly. He was clearly reluctant to give up the investigation to an animal.**

** "****Dogs have much keener senses of smell than humans," I explained matter-of-factly. "And I don't mean that they just have a good sense of smell. I mean, they can smell putrefaction and decomposition when there is almost no trace left. You've heard of rescue dogs saving children in the Arctic?" I motioned towards Maggie and the mastiff. "This is essentially the same thing."**

** "****He can," Brennan agreed, having hung back slightly so that she could hear us. "Once I saw Tootie find a dead body wrapped in plastic under concrete after four years."**

**Maggie glanced over her shoulder, not giving Booth the respect of looking at him while she talked. "Tootie can smell decaying blood on a tooth six feet underground. I mean, so what if he drools a little? What's up with that?" She rounded on him as the dog sniffed, muzzle pressed against the ground. "You know, your eyes are kind of close together, but I don't comment."**

**Booth grumbled what sounded suspiciously like an insult under his breath before holding his hands up. "I apologize."**

** "****Is he sincere?" Maggie asked me.**

**Wanting to just get this over with, I nodded slightly. "He's trying to be," I lied.**

** "****Alright then, we accept," Maggie told Booth with a decisive nod, while the dog started to circle. The big mastiff whined and then laid down on the carpeting, resting his muzzle on his crossed front paws. Tootie looked up with big, sad eyes and whined again.**

** "****Good boy, Tootie," Maggie cooed, stroking his head. The dog leaned into it, but stayed planted firmly right where he was. "He found something.**

**Booth scowled down at the canine. "Maybe he's just lazy," he suggested.**

**Brennan knelt down by Tootie, holding up a stick of pasty white chalk. "Lying down is his indicator," she told Booth, giving him a sharp expression. She wasn't being so much defensive of the dog anymore as she was just upset with Booth's attitude. "Tootie found it. There's a body under here." She started kneeling over the animal and drew thick white lines on the carpet with the chalk in a wide circle around the mastiff. "You should get a warrant to bring in a jackhammer for the floor. I'd start digging here."**

* * *

><p><strong>I stood with Booth and Tessa up on the high balcony overlooking the examination platform of the Jeffersonian. Tessa had a professional suit on with a blue striped tie, having probably just gotten away from the office. Booth had changed into a different shirt under his black FBI jacket. I was leaning up against the rail, alternating from looking down to Brennan, Zach, and Hodgins as they examined the skeleton of Eve Warren and watching Booth and Tessa interact.<strong>

** "****You're going to Jamaica for the weekend?" I repeated Tessa, reaching up to brush some hair out of my face. "That sounds awesome. Congrats, bros."**

** "****Um, it's a bed and breakfast," Tessa added, continuing the conversation after taking a glance to Booth. It seemed like she wasn't sure whether or not he was cool with me knowing his plans. He just shrugged. "There are these coral cliffs, snorkeling, and kayaking."**

** "****That sounds really cool!" I smiled graciously at her. Despite many people's opinions, I do have manners and I know how to be polite. I just choose not to most of the time. In all actuality, I can be quite charismatic. "You'll have fun. Jamaica's supposed to be a great place for a vacation. You'll be pretty far from law enforcement and crime." I think part of what made their relationship interesting was that Booth was an arresting officer, and Tessa was a lawyer. Cool, no? It's like a bowtie and tuxedo combination.**

**Brennan cleared her throat. I jumped slightly. I'd been paying so much attention to Booth and Tessa I'd forgotten about watching the platform. Brennan hadn't taken off her lab coat yet, and she was patiently waiting for an opportunity to share.**

**Tessa placed her hand on Booth's shoulder and kissed him quickly on the lips. "I'll talk to you later," she promised, before taking the shirt Booth had changed out of and moving quickly away. I looked at her retreating back. There was definitely a lack of comfort around Brennan. But then I looked back at Booth and smiled impishly.**

** "****No. No, don't start on me," the agent warned, waving his finger at me. "Normal people kiss. It's something children don't understand."**

** "****Yeah, there's totally no teenagers making out and having sex in this country," I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes.**

**Booth stuttered. "Just drop it, okay!"**

** "****Believe me, if I'd been planning on holding onto it, you would most definitely know."**

** "****It's Eve Warren," Brennan said once Tessa was out of earshot. "The dentals confirmed it."**

** "****Eve Warren," I repeated softly to myself. I closed my eyes briefly, thinking about her brother and the little girl – Maya – that the dead mother had given birth to. Then I shook myself out of it. This was not my job. My mission here was to find her murderer, not to worry about her family. "Cause of death?"**

** "****Same as Mount," Brennan said, giving me a slight look of understanding. She must have realized that I was thinking about the girl, who would grow up without a mother, like I did.**

** "****Meth overdose." Booth rubbed his hands together. He didn't seem to notice Brennan's and my temporary grief.**

** "****It was pushed in the face," Brennan added, "But there's more. I don't think that Rules killed her."**

**I frowned. "She was buried under his studio, though."**

** "****But her wrist was broken," Brennan said. My eyes widened and I face palmed.**

**Rules had shattered the bones in his dominant wrist and was still in a cast. No way could he fight her.**

* * *

><p><strong> "<strong>**Bone damage indicates that Eve was taken from behind and smashed into a wall," Brennan narrated as Angela made the holograph reflect her words. "Her skull shows damage to both the infraorbital and supraorbital margins and the zygomatic process."**

** "****Her head got an ouchie," I translated for Booth's benefit.**

**Booth narrowed his eyes at the hologram. "Zygo – zu – what –" After a few tries to pronounce 'zygomatic,' Booth gave up entirely with a groan of frustration. "Whatever. You said she was killed by crystal meth."**

** "****She was," Brennan nodded quickly, not giving Booth time to say that she was being typically confusing. "She would have been hurt, and stunned by the blow, but not killed, and certainly not immediately."**

** "****A bag of crystal meth was placed over her face, actually ****_ground _****into her wounds, and into the airway," Angela explained further, cringing back from her own holographic display as she spoke. I had to admit, even to me, that was some serious anger.**

** "****And there is no way that Rules could have smashed her into a wall," I added, clarifying the situation before Booth had time to ask more unnecessary questions. I pointed to the hologram as the already created scenario continued to play in glowing orange pixels. I spoke without the scientific terms to make this discussion go quickly. I want the person responsible for Eve's murder apprehended as quickly as possible. He left her daughter parentless, and I knew how horrible Maya would feel in later life about not having known her biological parents. "Eve's right wrist was twisted behind her back, damaging both her elbow and shoulder as well. For that to happen, the assailant would have needed to twist her arm with his right hand, while jamming the meth up against her face with the other, both with a large amount of force."**

**Booth snapped his fingers as he began to understand. "But Rules had been shot twice in the hand. He had nerve damage."**

**Brennan smiled slightly. "There is no way he had the strength to kill Eve Warren."**

* * *

><p><strong>Booth stomped right on out of the interrogation room not ten minutes after he'd gone in. Brennan and I watched from behind the one-way mirror. I had my arms crossed and smirked the whole time. He'd declined my offer of assistance, stating that "I got this down pat." For emphasis, he'd pat his own shoulder. Then I'd watched smugly as he got absolutely nowhere in the interrogation with deejay Rules.<strong>

** "****That kid's head is twisted," Booth declared, his face slightly red in his severe irritation.**

**I rolled my eyes. "Are you done?" He gave me a fish-eyed look. "Don't be an idiot, Booth. I'm not saying we give up. I'm saying you let me help, because I know the community that he lives in."**

**Booth looked seriously miffed that he couldn't get anything out of the deejay. I'll bet he wants to book him and see if he'll crack, but I know that that will only discourage him further from talking. A proud man like Rules won't want to give in to pressure. Instead, he twitched very slightly and threw both hands out towards the door back into the room. "Knock yourself out!"**

**I shook my head, picking up one of the spare earpieces on the desk. I brushed back my dark hair and turned it on, hooking it to my ear, and then pushed my hair back down to hide it. Taking a moment, I undid my somewhat neat appearance. I reached up to my hair and ruffled my fringe so it fell into my eyes. I tossed my head, forcing the bangs to flop out of my eyes, and I pulled my hair back. I used the rubber band on my wrist to haphazardly tie my hair in place. With that, I walked off to the door and shoved it open, confidently stepping in and shutting it behind me.**

**I pulled the chair across from the deejay away from the table, sending it in a slight whirl so the back faced the table, and sat on it backwards, reaching out with my hands to tap the table. I love acting tough. "You did not murder Eve Warren," I stated simply.**

**Rules chuckled, shaking his head slightly. He thought I was bemusing. "This is a weird kind of interrogation. Cops are telling me what I didn't do."**

** "****Well, then do me a favor and tell me Booth is wrong. Confess to a murder," I prompted.**

** "****Hell, no, dude!" Rules scoffed, crossing one arm across his chest and the other, his injured one, moved from the table to his lap. "What do you think, I'm some kind of idiot?"**

** "****Then do me a favor and deny it," I countered calmly. It seems like interrogation has actually helped my patience a little bit, which is kind of ironic when I think about it. Or maybe it's just made me better at repeating inner mantras to stay calm.**

**Rules leaned back in his table, his lip curling slightly. "See, you've got tricks. You're going to twist all my words 'round, so I'd better not say anything at all."**

** "****But you didn't kill Eve Warren," I reiterated, blinking owlishly.**

**Booth groaned from behind the mirror. ****"****_This is getting us nowhere."_**

** "****_Hush, Booth. I want to hear what she says."_**

**Note to self: Thank Brennan for getting Booth to be quiet later. It's hard to focus with his nagging in my ear.**

** "****So you say," Rules countered. "The Rules says say nothing."**

**I arched an eyebrow at him, the perfect picture of cleverness, if I do say so myself. "Yet you want us to hold you in the station, because your business will go through the roof if you get nailed for Mount's murder."**

** "****_What?" _****Brennan exclaimed. I ignored her. This would work better if Rules didn't know I had a skeletal expert and federal agent talking in my ear while I tried to cut bargains for information.**

** "'****Sactly," Rules nodded, looking at me appraisingly. "Why should deejay Mount get the bump, huh? Maybe it's my turn." His righteousness could be played.**

** "****So I'll make you a better deal," I proposed. I always love a challenge. I consider this a game to me, because how it ends depends on how I react. "You tell us what we need to know, and I'll make sure those charges get laid against you. You'll be put in the remand center."**

** "****For how long?" Rules seemed to think I might be tricking him.**

**I let a contemplative hum escape. "Depends on what you tell us."**

**I could imagine Brennan shaking her head, her brunette hair flying as she tried to reevaluate her knowledge on the situation. ****"****_Hold on, is she negotiating to put this guy IN jail?"_**

** "****And to make it better, I'll charge you with Roy Taylor's murder, too." I sighed for show. "Then again, you could always lawyer up. But if you get one of those moron attorneys, then you'll only be thrown in lockup for, oh, I don't know – a month, at most."**

** "****Sweet," Rules cheered very slightly, a satisfied, sly expression on his face. "I'm in."**

** "****_Where am I, backwards world?!" _****Brennan cried in confusion.**

** "****So what information do you have?" I prompted.**

**Rules leaned forwards, looking me in the eye like he was trying to prove he was sharing as much as he could. "Look, I can tell you all why Mount got killed, but you'll have to figure out the rest on your own." I nodded to show I was listening closely. "Mount was going to jump."**

** "****_You mean commit suicide?" _****Brennan questioned, sounding surprised.**

** "****No!" I said, accidentally speaking out loud. Well, at least she would hear. To cover up my mistake, I added, "He wasn't really going to jump labels, was he?" Rules nodded in a 'what can I say?' manner. "Deejay Mount was going to leave Basement Records." I grinned slightly. That implicated Randall Hall.**

** "****Look, all he needed was the money to buy himself back. That's why he got himself killed. Now if Hall finds out that I told you all that much, I'm going to end up some dried-out mummy in a wall, too."**

** "****So you believe Randall Hall is capable of murder?" I prodded, intrigued.**

** "****Maybe not on his own, but he's not past hirin' a guy," Rules said, scowling at the thought. I sort of agreed. I mean, if you're going to kill someone, at least have the decency to do it yourself.**

** "****Okay. And then what about Eve?"**

** "****Man, Eve couldn't kill nobody!" The deejay whined. "You know, sex them to death, maybe, but that's about it." I snickered. "There's one more thing, though. The next day, Hall built me a new studio. He took it out of my money, too," he added crossly.**

**I grinned to myself. There we go. All evidence points to the guy I dislike. This may be about as good as most peoples' Christmases. "So, you going to put me in jail?" Rules asked hopefully.**

**I stood up, turning the chair back and shoving it in. I beckoned him to stand up. "Well, you were very helpful. It's the least I can do to charge you with murder," I said, winking as he laughed.**

* * *

><p><strong> "<strong>**And there we go," I said as Brennan, Booth, and I strode up the stairs to the examination platform. "I told you I could help, but ****_no_****~!" I was still gloating a little bit about my success and his utter failure.**

** "****Yes, we've been over this," Booth growled, put off. "How about this? Hall has motive to kill Mount. Why? Because he's jumping labels, and he's running away with some girl who is stealing Hall's meth and money."**

**Brennan took some latex gloves that Zach offered her and blew into one, stretching it out. "I'm starting to see how this whole motive thing works."**

** "****Thank you," Booth said, nodding victoriously.**

** "****It's still murky psychological guesswork, though." Booth's smile slipped off of his face and I practically heard it hit the floor.**

** "****Dr. Brennan, I found a mark on Eve Warren," Zach said once the dialogue ceased for a moment. He walked nimbly over to the monitor and computer keyboard and mouse. "It's on the manubrium." He clicked a button on the mouse and the x-rays and close ups showed in different windows on the monitor. A little darkened fracture was on the bone.**

** "****Compare it to the mark on Mount," Brennan ordered. Zach nodded to himself and moved back to the first exam table, which held the deejay's remains.**

** "****Okay, so Eve tells Mount that she wants to start a new life. She steals the drugs and the money, thinking that she and Mount can build a new future for themselves and her baby girl," Booth theorized sensibly.**

** "****That's a ****_story, _****Booth," Brennan stressed. "You need to find something real."**

** "****But why?" Booth argued with feeling. "It feels real to me! Eve is a woman in love, trying to escape a world that's just crushing her." Brennan blinked and spared a quick glance to the picture of Mount and Eve standing together and smiling at the camera. "Mount finds out how much trouble the woman he's in love with is in, so he gives up his own life to protect her. That's not enough, though. They were looking for a better life and they wound up dead."**

**I sighed at that; why did love cause so much trouble? Although most little girls should, and its healthy for children to, I'd never believed in true love, no matter how many times I watched ****_Cinderella _****or ****_The Little Mermaid_****or any other sweet Disney movie. Actually, somehow I always manage to find fault in the "Prince Charmings." For example, Cinderella's prince wanted a trophy wife more than he wanted someone to love; he wanted someone good at everything that he could show off. Maybe it's just me that thinks that way; I do overthink simple things sometimes.**

** "****It looks like a match," Zach announced. He pulled both images into separate windows and minimized them before putting them up side by side on the monitor. They were nearly identical, and the variation left could be left to force or angle.**

** "****What the hell is that?" Booth asked, frowning at the screen.**

** "****I'm not sure," Brennan replied. "It's a bone dimple. But they both have it, so it can't be genetic. Something external caused it, but I'm not sure what."**

**I growled to myself and hit the back of one hand against my other's palm. "Randall Hall is behind this! He killed both of these people and left a little girl to grow up with only an uncle that won't really understand." I took a deep breath; I was getting emotional, showing too much of myself. ****_Don't feel it. Don't let it show. _****It was one of my own mottos. "We know that he did it, but we can't touch him! There's no evidence linking him to the drugs, the cash, or the bodies except for a couple of bone anomalies!"**

** "****I'll keep looking at the remains, and maybe find the evidence we need," Brennan volunteered.**

**Booth shook his head fervently, clearly in agreement with me. "I can't let it stand. You know what? I'm going to spread the pain, alright? That's my new motto." He turned his back to us, starting down the stairs to leave.**

**I brightened slightly, turning and running to follow. "Oh, let me assist! I am absolutely brilliant at spreading pain!"**

**Brennan stripped her gloves off with the faint snaps of rubber. "Wait! I can help spread pain, too!"**

* * *

><p><strong>Brennan, Booth, and I lied in wait for Hall in his own club. I lounged on the sofa, ignoring the cigarette odor and the little puffs of smoke that clouded for a few seconds when I moved too much. Oakes was sitting at a table, reading the newspaper, while Booth read a magazine, only half paying attention. Brennan was looking around, skimming through some of his books.<strong>

**When Hall came in, he looked like he was about to lecture us, but Booths spoke before he could. "We know you did it."**

** "****What?" Hall asked, deciding to play dumb.**

** "****You killed Mount in that wall so that he wouldn't leave your label," Booth stated coolly.**

** "****And you killed Eve Warren," Brennan added.**

**I stood up from the couch, cracking my knuckles intimidatingly. "You murdered her in cold blood and buried her under deejay Rules's studio. This is going to remain an active crime scene." I narrowed my eyes. "Did you know Eve had a daughter? She's a toddler. Her name is Maya. What is Eve's brother going to do when she asks about her mother? ****_Sorry, Maya, but you're never going to see your mommy again because a coldhearted, petty bastard decided she wasn't worth life? _****If I were as idiotic as you, I'd kill you right here!" I glared at him fiercely, fire sparking in my eyes.**

** "****It's harassment," Hall accused, very carefully not reacting to my accusations. "I'll sue."**

** "****Oh, I'm going to harass you every chance I get!" I promised.**

**Hall lifted his cane from the ground, grasped the steel, curved top, and shoved it at me, hitting me just above my breasts with the metal tip. "I'm not somebody you want to mess with," he warned.**

**I scoffed, pretending not to feel the painful sting of where the cane had connected with my body. I mean, ouch, that had a bit of a bite to it. "Did you just… ****_poke _****me?" I demanded, my voice lowering dangerously. I took a step closer to him. My tall height made me a bit taller than him and he shrank back slightly. I doubt he did it on purpose. I turned to Brennan and Booth, who had just stood up at the assault. "Did he just ****_poke _****me with his little toy stick?" I asked them, laughing harshly.**

**Hall threw his weight to his other leg, pulling his cane back to his side. I glanced to Booth and Brennan, about to ask if Booth could arrest him for assault on a minor, when I saw Brennan's expression. She was completely zeroed in on the cane. I changed my gaze. The rounded steel that Hall held onto came to an end that was sculpted to look like a serpent with its fangs bared wide. The metallic tip had a sharp point; that's why it had hurt when he'd jabbed me with it. That, and he'd hit me right over a bone… the manubrium, to be exact, just like he probably had with Eve and Mount, although admittedly, he must have done it harder to them. "This is my place," Hall declared, getting worked up. "If I want to poke someone, I do it."**

**Brennan took the next opportunity. When Hall lifted the cane to take a step, she lunged and grabbed it. Oakes pulled a concealed weapon on Booth, who had drawn his own gun when Hall had started to fight back on Brennan. I made a jump at Oakes, tackling him to the ground and wrestling the pistol from his grasp and then turning it on Hall. Booth picked up the cane which had fallen to the side through the scuffle. "How easily do you think I scare?" He complained, holding either side of it and bringing his knee up to snap it.**

** "****Don't break the cane," Brennan yelled at him. "Arrest him and confiscate the cane as evidence! I need the cane."**

** "****Arrest him for what?" Booth asked her, holding the cane up in the air with one hand. "He's the guy who pointed the gun at a federal agent!" He pointed at Oakes, whose gun I still held.**

** "****For assaulting and threatening a minor," I supplied. "Did you see that?" I gestured to him, carelessly pointing the gun at him. "He hit me in the chest with a metal cane! That is rude!" I turned back to Oakes for a moment, waving the gun in the air. "And the next time we have to take a gun away from you, I'll shoot you with it!"**

** "****Fine, here." Booth passed off the cane to me and pulled handcuffs from his belt. "Randall Hall, I am placing you under arrest, alright? For the assault of a minor."**

**Hall sneered. "This will never go to court."**

** "****You want to make a bet on that?" I challenged, before brandishing the cane, reaching out, and whacking him with it. "It's not a nice feeling, is it, Mr. I-Can-Poke-People?"**

* * *

><p><strong>I tightened the straps around the protective vest, carefully not to actually touch the graduate student. Zach flinched slightly as I yanked back on the securing strap. "Sorry," I apologized, loosening it slightly. "But hey, it's better to feel like you're wearing a corset for a few minutes than to have a permanent injury."<strong>

**I stepped back and walked around to face Zach, pulling on the vest strapped tightly around his torso. Zach was pulled forwards, too, and I smiled, satisfied. I reached to the desk and pulled a dark blue slate of molding clay, the type that the Jeffersonian used to make molds of injuries. I held it out to Zach and he took it, holding it up in front of him. "Here?" He asked. We were trying to replicate the angle that Hall had hit me at, because I'm about Eve Warren's height. I compared where he was holding up the clay to where I'd been hit.**

** "****A little higher," I corrected.**

**Hodgins rubbed his hands together, his eyes gleaming. "Oh, yes," he grinned manically. "I love my job."**

** "****Ugh, don't break him," I requested, rolling my eyes. Hodgins picked up Hall's cane and swung it around, getting a feel for the weight, and Zach swallowed nervously.**

**The security system beeped as Angela stepped up on the platform. "Get this, I called Tessa to tell her a couple of places she should check out in Jamaica, but she's not going."**

** "****What happened?" I asked, pouting slightly. I'd have loved to tease Booth one last time about a vacation with his sexy lawyer friend.**

** "****Well, she said something came up at work, but, I know the truth," Angela sighed.**

**Hodgins looked over to Brennan. "How many times do you want me to poke Zach?" He asked excitedly.**

** "****Just once, but as hard as you can," the anthropologist replied quickly.**

** "****As hard as he can?" Zach repeated, looking affronted. "Why don't I hit him as hard as I can?"**

**Hodgins gave him a look that suggested Zach was being silly. "Because you have arms like noodles, while I'm vigorous and burly."**

** "****Oh, so that's what they're calling it now," I said, going along with it.**

** "****Hey!"**

** "****What truth?" Brennan asked Angela, going back to the Tessa-Booth topic.**

**Meanwhile, Hodgins planted his feet firmly and held up the cane, before thrusting it forward and hitting Zach square in the center of the clay. Braced by the vest and clay, Zach only stumbled slightly, but his eyes flared as he grunted. "Is that all you got, burly boy?" He challenged with sharp bravado. Hodgins gave him another of those looks and snatched away the clay block.**

** "****They got freaked out by stage six," Angela sighed again, feeling very bummed out.**

** "****What's stage six?" I asked tentatively, not sure I wanted to know.**

**Angela sighed again, this time more theatrically. "How does a teenage girl not know the six stages of romance? One, spend the night. Two, spend the weekend. Three, exchange keys. Four, sexy weekend getaway. Five, extended vacation. All inevitably followed by six; move in together." I frowned uneasily. If I met a guy I liked, I wouldn't spend the night with him before hanging out with him in a few public places first, just to make sure he wasn't some psychotic or anything. Angela clearly wasn't thinking these steps through.**

**Brennan clearly agreed with me that Angela was making these up. "I'm an anthropologist. I know the stages of everything, and you made those up."**

** "****I did not," Angela denied.**

** "****Yes, you did," Brennan stayed firm.**

** "****They got to stage five, and they balked," Angela shrugged like that solved everything.**

** "****Not Booth. Booth does not balk," Brennan denied.**

** "****Sweetie," Angela smiled supportively. "It's always the guy."**

**Brennan disagreed, shaking her head vigorously. "Booth is not a balker," she maintained.**

**Hodgins looked up from the clay. "The mark on Mount and Eve, they're the same. And they came from the cane."**

**I shook my head, pursing my lips furiously. "He just can't resist hitting people with that stupid cane. Hall is the killer."**

** "****Send the cane, the photos, and the medium to the FBI," Brennan commanded. "Let them confirm the match."**

** "****What?" Hodgins pouted. "Let them have all the glory?" He was very disappointed. I guess I'm a bit late realizing that this lab is not very professional.**

**I stepped up to Zach, avoiding actually touching him as I started pulling back the straps of his vest and loosening the safety equipment from him. "My chest hurts," Zach whimpered.**

**Brennan shook her head, fond of her intern. "Yeah, all the glory," she told Hodgins, coming up and patting Zach on the shoulder.**


	20. The Man on Death Row, Part One

_Snip. Snip. Snip._

Short clips of platinum blonde hair fell into my sink. I combed through my bangs again, rereading the cardboard box the hair dye had been in, just for good measure. As the comb pulled neatly through now-even fringe, I held my hand over the hair straightener. Heat billowed up against my palm. I set down the scissors, split ends clipped away, and lifted the hair styling tool up, carefully pulling my hair away from my body and closing the superheated tongs around it.

I went through this process several times and gradually, my hair began to lose the natural volume. It began to straighten itself, leaving only a very, very slight curve inwards at the very last inch. I unplugged the flatiron and looked at myself in the mirror. I barely recognized myself.

My pale complexion had been changed with the use of some dark blush. My cheeks were slightly rosy, but not in an unhealthy way. My blue eyes looked like they had a touch of green because of the color of eyeshadow that I'd used. My characteristically wavy, voluminous black hair was now significantly shorter than it had been when I'd woken up, not to mention that it was a radically different color. Oh, yeah. This ought to give me some freedom from the media for a while. If I can barely recognize me when I'm looking in a mirror, then there's no way they'll figure it out too soon.

I walked to the bar, keeping my head down and my sweater's hood up over my head. I hated doing this, but if it was going to keep me from becoming the press's go-to for an article, then I'll gladly suffer through it.

The bar was quiet. I clocked in with Andy, and told him not to ask about the appearance change. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that assisting the federal bureau had led to it. I'm not in the mood for frustrating "I told you so"-s.

After serving a woman a martini while she read a feminist romance novel, I sat on a stool on the bar, propping my head up with my hand and yawning. I hadn't slept as long as usual last night, because I'd had to get up early to dye, cut, and straighten my hair. It's only for a few days, I promised myself. The press can't keep rerunning the story for forever. It's temporary dye, anyway. Since it's the cheapest brand I could find, it'll probably wash out in a matter of days; a week, at most.

Around noon, while I was dozing off, another woman came in, wearing a pristine, creaseless business suit. I snapped the rubber band around my wrist to wake up further. "Welcome to the establishment," I said, pretending that I'd been awake the whole time. "How can I help you?"

She had long, curly ginger hair and sharp light blue eyes. She radiated confidence, from the way she held herself with a completely straight back, to the way she spoke to me. "I'm looking for a Miss Holly Kirkland."

I sighed. Oh, no. "You've found her."

She seemed surprised. "Oh, in the pictures you always seemed to have dark hair. I'm sorry, I didn't realize-"

"Dyed it today," I said, waving off her apology. "Now how can I help you? Is this about the Davis trial?"

The woman eyed me, trying to decide something. I tried not to squirm. She was definitely from the government, because news of the trial didn't seem to surprise her. "Amy Morton," she said, extending her hand to me. I just shook my head. Not going to happen. Amy took it in stride. "I'm a defense lawyer, and I'd like your help."

"Listen, Miss Morton, I'm really not able to help you." I said, bewildered. I can honestly say I did not see this coming! I mean, whoa! "I'm testifying against Martin Davis's murderer, and if you're not here about that, then I'm really no help at all."

Amy smiled slightly at me. "But I think you can be," she countered. "My client, Howard Epps, was arrested by Special Agent Seeley Booth, who you have been in allegiance with."

I straightened. Was she going after Booth now? Loyal to the agent, I crossed my arms. "Booth wouldn't arrest someone without evidence against them," I stated sharply. "And I'm not going to help you to convince a jury otherwise."

Amy sighed, getting slightly frustrated. _Good. _"I don't want to undermine anyone!" She exclaimed, exasperated. "I want to save the life of a man who is on death row. Booth was only the arresting officer, not the judge that sentenced him to execution. But I need the Jeffersonian scientists to help me if I want to get anywhere, and their supervisor rejected my request to meet with them!"

"Good for him!" I said, mentally applauding Dr. Goodman. "They're not just some agency that you can contract when you want something done! They have jobs. Besides, evidence has to go through the chain of forensic command before it reaches the judge. There's nothing they can do for you." I softened slightly when Amy appeared devastated. "I'm sorry that someone you know is going to be killed. But if he's on death row, then don't you think that maybe he deserves it? The name Howard Epps rings a bell, and if he's a criminal, then there's no way that that's a good thing."

"He's innocent. I truly believe that," Amy protested. "But some evidence wasn't fully investigated before his prosecution."

This got my attention.

I believe in the death penalty. Call me all the names you want, that won't change. Some people do not deserve to live among innocent citizens, especially in a society where there are so many opportunities to catch someone alone in the dark. Many people wouldn't blame anyone who claimed they would strangle Hitler if they could travel in time, so why is death penalty so hard to accept?

At the same time, it's still condemning someone to death. It's okay, in my opinion, if there's no doubt whatsoever that the suspect is the perpetrator. But if key evidence wasn't examined, then facts could be skewed, and a wrongly-convicted man could be executed for something he didn't do, and that's not right.

"So why not bring this to Booth? It's him you're searching for," I asked instead of leaping up to declare myself on board. I can't help it if I'm intrigued by murder and convictions.

"Because he won't listen to me. I think if he hears from you, then he might be more inclined to reactivate the investigation," Amy explained.

On one hand, I felt like I was being used. That's fair, I mean, I kind of am. But on the other hand, what would it say about me if I didn't do what I could to make sure someone innocent didn't pay for murder? "I can go with you to the FBI to see Booth. I can get you in, because for a short time I wasn't even supposed to be more than a mile away from a federal employee, but I can't promise he'll help."

Amy sighed, deeply relieved. "Thank you, so much."

* * *

><p>Amy and I waited in Booth's office for his return. I claimed Booth's spinning seat behind the desk and rocked backwards, crossing my arms behind my head and trying to seem like I felt like I belonged. Amy stayed standing, which told me she wasn't comfortable here. She's probably not been in here before.<p>

We didn't have to wait long. Booth came towards the office from a conference room, Brennan at his heels. "Bones, you don't need a gun," Booth sighed, still in his argument. It was so loud I could hear it all the way over here. "If anyone needs shooting, I'll do it."

"What if you're injured or dead, and someone still needs shooting?" Brennan proposed. Booth turned on her and gave her a 'what the hell?' expression. "Well, I'm not hoping it will happen, I'm just stating a possibility!"

"You know what, Bones?" Booth moaned as Brennan kept following him. "You're a professor! You're not an FBI agent. Use your mutant powers to just talk people to death."

Booth's eyes widened as he stepped into his office and saw me lounging in his chair. Amy smiled uncertainly between Booth and Brennan. "Am I interrupting something?" She asked, looking between the two of them.

Booth raised his hand to her. "I told them not to let you into this building. I gave them your picture."

"I'm pretty sure that's why she wore the obscenely short skirt," I said with a hapless shrug. Amy fingered the hem of the pleated skirt in question.

"Amy Morton," Amy introduced herself to Brennan, holding out her hand.

Brennan understood the gesture and they shook hands. "Temperance Brennan."

"You work with Booth?"

"Yes, I'm a forensic anthropologist."

"I'm a defense lawyer. I tend to work against Booth."

"If it's all the same, I'd prefer you two didn't bond in any way," Booth interrupted, pushing them both away from each other.

I laughed. "Oh, I bet you would."

Brennan waved at me. "Hello. Have we met?"

I raised my eyebrow. "Um, yeah. You know, seventeen year old from the slums, Booth's ward for two weeks, person who totally beat up a Venezuelan official and got away with it."

"Holly?" Brennan asked, stunned. "You dyed your hair!"

I nodded. "The publicity was beginning to be a hassle. This way they won't recognize me, or take pictures!" I grinned, pleased with myself. Brennan nodded in agreement, calming down as she processed my rational explanation.

Then she looked to Booth, dismissing Amy. Amy had been about to say something, but since she no longer had the attention, she faltered. "Hey, I want to get back to the lab. You said I could fill out some gun reapplication forms."

"Yeah," Booth said, waving her away. "Send it back by courier. No hurry."

Brennan frowned, biting her lip as Booth frustrated her once more. She spun around and started out the door, calling over her shoulder to Amy. "Nice to meet you."

Amy watched Brennan retreat out of the office suite, her extended arm falling back to her side as she'd failed to get the anthropologists' lasting attention. She seemed disappointed, dismayed, sad, even, but it was clear that, since she'd gone as far as to get a seventeen year old to get her in the building, she wasn't going to give in that easily. "Hey, if you want to get him on board, better start trying now," I hinted without subtlety.

Booth sat down in the chair across from me. I gave a silly grin. Now I know how it feels to be behind an authority's desk. He massaged his temples like he was preparing for the worst. "What do you want, Amy?"

Amy brought her hands down in front of her, intertwining her fingers. "You remember Howard Epps?"

Booth looked up. I swear, his eyes took on a guarded and haunted expression. "Not likely to forget him," he answered, keeping his answer careful.

"He's scheduled to be executed tomorrow night. My job is to keep that from happening."

"Huh," Booth grunted. "Best of luck."

Amy's lip curled at his obvious lack of caring for Howard Epps. "Howard Epps deserves five minutes of consideration from the man who put him on death row!" She said, her eyes lighting up. Her bravado increased. She really was working to help, not just to get a paycheck. She genuinely thought Epps was innocent.

Booth shot up from his seat, angling himself to Amy and staring her down. "I arrested Howard Epps, okay? It was the jury who sentenced him to die!"

"They found a pubic hair on the victim at the crime scene. It didn't belong to my client. They never figured out whose it was," Amy argued. Her hands moved from in front of her to her sides.

"Oh, great. More sex. Wasn't there enough of that in the Olivos case?" I asked rhetorically. Neither of the adults answered, although that wasn't a surprise. I hadn't actually expected them to.

"Blame the judge who disallowed it as evidence, and the judge who disallowed it on appeal," Booth growled.

Amy's fingers curled around the hem of her skirt. "Epps was not well-represented at either trial," she said curtly.

"How long have you been on this case?" Booth asked, his eyes narrowing to pierce through the defense lawyer. His voice lowered.

"Almost a week," Amy answered confidently, but frowned when she realized what angle he was going at.

"Less than a week, huh?" Booth chuckled mirthlessly. "Two judges, two juries, two prosecutors that find Epps guilty – yet it's me you come after."

"I'm just asking," Amy said softly, her eyes not leaving his. "Are you absolutely positive that Howard Epps killed that girl?"

Booth didn't hesitate, but his eyes slipped from Amy, to the floor, then back to her. "Yeah. I am absolutely positive."

Amy smiled very softly, having noticed the same thing I did. "You know in your heart that the judges should have allowed the juries to hear that that victim was with another man that night. You know it."

"Epps would still have been convicted," Booth declared with finality, trying to dismiss her without being overly impolite. I watched curiously. It was an interesting debate to watch; Amy truly, honestly believed Epps didn't kill anyone. Booth, however, had seemed resolute until Amy brought up the evidence that hadn't been investigated. I knew for a fact that Booth didn't like loose ends, and now it seemed that, like he had one himself, he was fraying and unraveling.

"Not if I'd been his lawyer," Amy insisted adamantly. She clearly wasn't going to be dissuaded.

"You weren't," Booth said obviously, like he thought she needed reminding.

"I am now," she countered. Her entire countenance softened as she saw that she was getting through. "When was the last time you looked him in the face?" She appealed. "Because you're a lot smarter than you were seven years ago. You're a lot less angry. You might want to check out the evidence again."

I felt like now might be a good time to interrupt and see what I'd gotten myself into. "Sorry – but it seems like Amy's winning, so – do you think someone could tell me what Epps did? I mean, was convicted for?" I quickly corrected myself when Amy sent me a wounded look.

"He beat a girl your age to death with a tire iron." Booth said, his voice cold. "While she was all alone in the dark. He killed her, listening to her scream, and it wouldn't have been particularly fast."

* * *

><p>The darkened jail hall of the local prison was not a very welcoming place to be. Now magnify that feeling by about ten times when you go to the extremely-secure hall for the convicts on death row. It was a long walk down the marble corridor to Howard Epps' cell, and due to who we were seeing, where we were, and my age, Booth and I both had a guard accompanying us.<p>

I'd been all gung-ho about seeing a killer in a place full of serial offenders. But I was quickly learning it wasn't like it is on TV. I mean, I knew already that it wouldn't be the same, but I hadn't really thought about it too much. Howard Epps would have a creep factor to him just for being in this place, but the difference between Thompson, Masruk, Pattison, Destri, Nelson, Hall, and the people in this place was the psychology. Sure, the killers I've met have been horrible. A killer has to be, if the only reason they're killing is for the kill or their own personal gain. But these people here, a majority of which are serial killers or particularly gruesome murderers, are psychopaths or sociopaths, which are an entirely different class. Psychopaths have absolutely no empathy, and that makes them dangerous. They are incapable of understanding emotions. Sociopaths often lack a sense of right or wrong, or a sense of self-control. Both are incredibly risky types of people to be around.

Mostly, my excitement had been killed by getting too close to one of the cells on accident, back at the beginning of the corridor. An inmate, shrouded in darkness, had reached out and snatched at my arm. The guard had grabbed the convict's hand and ripped it away from my body before I could return the unkind sentiments, but it had spooked me nonetheless.

The buzzer rang as the door opened. Epps was in solitary containment, since he was scheduled for execution in forty-eight hours. His appearance took me by surprise. Aside from being manacled, he didn't seem crazed. He was sickly-pale, which wasn't surprising since he hasn't seen the sun in who knows how long. His lips were chapped. His hair was kept short in a buzz cut, the normal prison style, I guess. His nose had been broken at least once before, I could tell. But his eyes… oh, man. His dark brown, nearly black eyes were sunken, bloodshot, and there were purplish rings around his eyes. His gaze locked on me as I slipped in behind Booth and a chill ran up my spine by how he looked at me.

His eyes turned calculating, nearly malicious. They sparked back to life as he looked at me, starting at my now-blonde hair and moving down. Ugh! Damn it, I feel like he's undressing me with his eyes! Can someone say pervert?! And he's got to be at least three times my age! Maybe instead of being a psychopath, his problem is that he's a pedophile!

Booth didn't seem to notice the unnatural attention I was being granted. "I'd ask how you were doing, Howard, but I guess we both know the answer."

"Agent Booth." Epps nodded, forcing himself to look at the agent. "Did you come to apologize?"

Booth set his jaw. As Epps's eyes flickered to me again, this time I didn't just freeze. I rolled my shoulders and made my hands into fists, sending the message that I would crush him like a bug. If anything, this only made him more interested in me. I glared at him anyway.

"I'm not the one who beat a seventeen year old girl to death," Booth returned coldly, missing the silent exchange. "Your attorney wants me to look you in the face."

"Why?" He asked, his voice sounding too whispery for my liking. It made me associate him with shadows.

"She thinks you're innocent."

"She's right about that," Epps nodded, swallowing pitifully. "I didn't kill anybody. Unlike you, the sniper." I tensed. Now he's going after Booth with his low, simpering voice. "The girl who got murdered was smart, pretty, from a good family. Someone has to die for that, and I'm all they've got." He looked to me. "Do you think that's fair?"

Booth didn't turn his back on Epps, but he did talk directly to me. "You don't have to answer anything he asks you."

"I think Agent Booth wouldn't have arrested you if he didn't think that you were capable and responsible for bludgeoning a woman to death." I answered. Although I appreciated that Booth was giving me an excuse not to interact with this creeper, I wasn't going to take it and let him think that I wouldn't stand for myself. Not with the way he looked at me. "After that, he had nothing to do with your persecution. You shouldn't go simpering to him. Your appeal failed. He had nothing to do with anything after the initial charges. And I also think," I added, hardening my gaze. "That if you don't stop looking at me like a Playboy magazine, then unarmed or not, I will punch you in the face."

For a barest second, a smile flitted over Booth's face, like he was proud of me for putting Epps in his place. Well, I suppose he wanted to, but it's not very professional, so he was just glad someone did it. Then Booth stood up abruptly, the chair scraping loudly on the floor as it was shoved back. "Okay. I looked you in the face."

"I read it can be hell," Epps said suddenly. "They say it's like going to sleep, but you're on fire. And you're paralyzed, so you can't scream." His eyes glowed mildly as they reflected the dim light of his death row cell. "I mean, that's all you've got sometimes, you know? The scream."

* * *

><p>Booth shooed me into the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal lab to introduce our presences while he, because of his gun, had to be checked over by security. Luckily for me, I had no concealed weapons (that they knew about) and since they recognized me, I was let right on through to the platform.<p>

Angela was holding her purse in her hand and swarming around Brennan, persuading her to go do not death-related things with her, while Hodgins and Zach were racing beetles across a makeshift track set made of books. "What if they get mixed up?" Hodgins asked.

"I can tell them apart," Zach answered honestly. "That's Jeff, and that's Ollie. I win."

"What do you-" Hodgins started, but stopped in favor of protesting. "What?! That one was mine!"

"You had Jeff, I had Ollie," Zach reminded him. "Ollie won. You owe me a buck."

Hodgins, stalling, looked up to the artist hopefully. "Do you want in on the action, Angela?"

Angela gave him a pretty smile that she plastered on her face as she looked between the three scientists. "No, thank you. I'm going to go have sex."

"Have a good time," Hodgins said with a smirk.

"Down, boy," I interjected with an equally-evil smile.

"Xena!" Hodgins' attitude brightened. "What the hell did you do to your hair?!"

I reached up and smoothed down the side of my dyed hair. Aside from the obvious, that it was blonde, when it had formerly nearly reached my elbow, it was now several inches shorter. "I dyed and cut it," I said, amused. "I thought it was pretty obvious."

"Why would you do that?" Angela asked, gaping in shock. "I mean, the split ends could have been fixed without taking dramatic action!"

I rolled my eyes. "It wasn't because of my hair, it was because the news is getting the attention of my boss. I don't like my job, but I do like my paychecks. This way the press won't recognize me as easily and I'll get a break for the story to die down."

Angela looked physically pained as she looked down at me, and then to the other adults on the platform with her. "You know, the whole point of the week is the weekend. This is not the cabaret, my friends. _Life _is the cabaret. Come to the cabaret." She pouted when Brennan didn't reply to her, instead making note of something on a partial skeleton that lay on the table. "It's like describing the moon to a mole…"

Hodgins was ignoring Angela, and had given up stalling Zach. "I demand another beetle, alright?"

I moved so that Hodgins couldn't see me but Zach could and rubbed my fingers together to indicate money. I pointed to Hodgins and then made a 'wait' motion, and then made the 'more' sign in sign language and did the money symbol again.

Zach took my theatrics to heart. "Because you attempted to get out of paying me the agreed amount, you should pay a more extensive fee or I will not race the beetles with you again."

I grinned and made a big thumbs up as Hodgins' shoulders slumped. "Fine. Go from one dollar to five dollars."

Zach subtly looked at me. I shook my head and pointed upwards. Zach gave Hodgins a neutral look until the older man caved. "Ten dollars."

I made the so-so gesture and then pointed up again.

"Twenty?" Hodgins offered helplessly, seeing as Zach wasn't going to give in.

Zach looked at me for confirmation. I nodded and made the 'okay' sign with one hand and a thumbs up with the other. Zach looked back to Hodgins. "Deal."

Hodgins must have noticed Zach had been looking behind him. He spun around and crossed his arms, giving me a look. I whistled innocently. "Really, Xena?"

"What?" I asked, pretending to be oblivious. "I didn't do anything." On the other side of Hodgins, Angela was giving me two thumbs up and a big grin.

Booth came into the lab then, looking disgruntled. When he saw Angela, he smiled at her. "Looking good, Angela!"

Angela crossed her arms over her low-cut red shirt's neckline. "And don't I know it."

"Our tax dollars hard at work."

Hodgins glared, although it lacked a sting. "Yeah, what's break time at the FBI? Book burning?"

Booth walked over to their table after sliding his new ID card. With an angry expression, he picked up an empty chemical beaker from Hodgins' platform desk and flipped it before placing it over one of the beetles threateningly. "No!" Hodgins exclaimed, looking like he'd been physically attacked. Booth rolled his eyes and moved the beaker away from the arthropod.

Smiling, happy to have bothered the entomologist, Booth sauntered to Brennan. "Hey Bones, what are you doing this weekend?"

"I have plans," Brennan answered immediately.

Booth followed her as she walked around the exam table. "Come on," he whined. "I'm serious."

"Between your girlfriend the corporate lawyer and the defense lawyer on the side, your weekend must be completely booked. What is your thing with lawyers?"

"Dr. Brennan," I interrupted softly. My change in demeanor got her attention. "Please just hear him out." If he was innocent, then, creeper or not, Epps shouldn't face the death penalty. If he was guilty, then at least it wouldn't bother everyone's conscious.

Brennan stood up straight, temporarily dismissing her partial skeleton in favor of surveying Booth's sincerity as he spoke. "Look, seven years ago, a seventeen year old girl, April Wright, was found beaten to death in a federal park. Amy's just trying to stop the guy who did it from being executed."

"So, I guess we're not pursuing your lawyer obsession?" Brennan asked.

"No. Amy doesn't think he did it."

Brennan crossed her arms. "And what does this have to do with you?"

"Amy's client is scheduled for execution, and she needs to cover everything she can. Booth is one of her proverbial stones," I explained.

Brennan seemed too intrigued to not ask for further detail now. "Do you think that he did it?"

"Yes," Booth answered without much hesitation.

"And what's her reasoning?"

"There was a pubic hair that wasn't accounted for."

"Pubic hair? That sounds like a job for the FBI crime lab."

"It's a weekend deal," Booth sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Off the books, but if you have plans…"

Brennan gave Booth a long look before stepping off of the platform and beginning to follow the route to her personal office. Booth chased after her, still trying to succeed in his goal, and I followed, figuring that if I stayed and Hodgins was unoccupied, I might end up being guilty before proven innocent for my games. "This is a personal favor you're asking?"

"Not for me," Booth quickly corrected her. "For Amy."

Brennan shook her head, disagreeing. "Your personal favor would be for Amy, but mine would be for you, strictly speaking."

Booth gave in with a sigh. He must not have seen another way to get her on board. "Please do me a favor. Please?"

Brennan snapped right back into her anthropologist mode. "Any remains withheld from burial?"

"Not after the last appeal," Booth answered promptly, relieved.

"I'd need x-rays from the medical examiner and the coroner. Originals," she quickly elaborated. "The copies are useless. I'll need bone scrapings, lab results, toxin screens."

"All the evidence will be here within an hour," Booth promised.

"Is Holly good to work one like this?" Brennan asked, looking between Booth and I.

"Amy roped me into it already," I explained. "That's why I was at the office. I was a link to get to Booth, but in the process I found out about the case. I've already been with Booth to see the accused in the local jail. Technically, I've already become a consultant."

Brennan nodded, understanding. "I'll ask the others," she told Booth, but said in no uncertain terms, "But I won't order them. They might have plans."

"Yes, I specifically remember Angela announcing that she was going to go have sex," I stated matter-of-factly.

Booth gave us a deadpan look that would have been funny if circumstances weren't quite so time-sensitive. "It's Friday night and they're racing beetles."

Brennan picked up her fur-lined coat from where it lay on the back of her desk chair. "How much time do we have?"

I looked to the analog clock on the wall and did a quick mental calculation. "Howard Epps will be executed in exactly thirty hours and twenty-three minutes."

* * *

><p>AN: "The Man on Death Row" was always one of my favorite Bones episodes from the first season. I really enjoyed writing this and since it was originally written around six months ago, I considered going back and revising it, but I decided that I liked it enough the way it is. I'm really excited for the reception of my written version of the episode.


	21. The Man on Death Row, Part Two

Back on the platform, we were pulling out all the stops. It was one thing to by catching a murderer. It was a bit different to stop a man from being murdered, especially for something that he may not have done. The pressure was entirely different. All of the evidence from April Wright's murder was in a box (x-rays, particulates, reports, et cetera) and we were working through everything in the fastest and most systematic way possible.

Zach was just now finishing scanning in x-rays to the monitor so that they could be blown up and seen as a larger image. Hodgins was reading through the FBI crime lab's report on the particulates. Brennan was flipping through the coroner's and M.E.'s reports. Booth was hovering anxiously, not having the clearance to work on the sciences of the case, while I was scanning over the autopsy report and basic files (and being Booth's translator on the side). We were trying to go as fast as possible by assigning everyone to their strengths; and since the Medico-Legal lab lacks a pathologist, that's how I ended up with autopsy results and the like. It helps that I read medical shorthand. I love online textbooks.

"Zach, pull up the first x-ray," Brennan instructed, balancing her file on the palm of her hand. Zach did as he was told and the picture came up on the large monitor. "Stress fractures on both tibias," she nodded, like she was agreeing with something from her report.

"What does that mean?" Booth asked, uncrossing his arms.

"Pre-existing the assault, probably an old injury from dance or running," Zach added, not to anyone in particular.

"So it's a cheerleading injury," I relayed to Booth. "Not related to her murder."

"That makes, sense. She was a cheerleader," Booth said, trying to be helpful.

I waved April Wright's file up in the air. "Yeah, I know."

"The Chinese used to execute people by cutting small pieces of flesh off their bodies," Hodgins informed randomly as he read the label of a particulate evidence jar.

"The death of a thousand cuts," I smiled faintly to myself. "I always thought that the Chinese have good lotions because they'd need some way to get the blood out of their skin before it stained."

Booth, Brennan, and Zach ignored us in our weird moment. Brennan was taking the opportunity to look through the original x-rays. She could see them closer and there would be less likelihood of a nonexistent anomaly appearing. "Compound fractures of the trapezium, scaphoid, and the base of the radius."

Booth jumped a little and straightened his back. "What's that mean?"

I glared at the typed line telling me April Wright's blood type, not as angry at is as I was at the new information. "It means that while she was being beaten to death, she put her arms up against her attacker to defend herself." As an afterthought, I added, "That's consistent with the locations of defensive wounds on the autopsy report."

"In medieval Scotland, they'd tie a convict's arms and legs to two bent saplings. When they released the saplings, the trees sprang apart and the convicted felon was torn in half," Hodgins told everyone. Before Brennan could reprimand him from being off topic, he held up an evidence bag with a slip of paper in it. "Should I grab particulates from this?"

"That's clean," Booth told him, stopping him from wasting his time. "It's a phone number we found on the girl. It belonged to an old woman in a nursing home with no connection to anyone involved."

"There is extensive damage to the skull, smashed six to eight times with a narrow, cylindrical object," Brennan dictated.

"The tire iron was missing from her car," Booth informed.

I frowned. "The autopsy says she had sex shortly before time of death, but it was consensual. Since her car was found in the park with her body, I'd say it's safe to say she agreed to meet up with someone, and then either she was meeting with the murderer or the murderer attacked her after the second party left. She could have been a target for a stalker or she could have been a victim of opportunity. If it's possible to find which she was, and who she met with, then we could find whether or not the killer was organized or disorganized. Most of the things about this crime say disorganized, but there has to be something we're missing. Otherwise there wouldn't be enough to tie Epps to the murder."

"I don't like psychology," Brennan said, gently dismissing my guesses.

"I don't like most psychologists, but there are two types of killers," I tried to explain in a way she would understand. "Organized and disorganized. And if Howard Epps is, for example, organized and the total of findings points to disorganized, then we might have enough to stay the execution. It's reasonable doubt based on previous evaluations of serial killers."

Brennan dipped her head to me. "I accept your theory."

"Meeting and having sex in the park," Booth was chewing on the inside of his cheek. This case really has him torn up. "That's normal for teenagers, right?"

I sent him a look. "I _know _you're not asking if I've ever done that."

Booth's complexion paled very slightly. "No, of course not."

"Good."

"The hair they found was never matched to anyone?" Zach asked, looking away from the monitor for a minute.

Booth shook his head. "No. The prosecution got it excluded from evidence both in trial and on appeal."

Brennan tilted her head, like she could barely believe this. "That's the basis of your lawyer's last-ditch attempt to stop the execution?"

"Yeah, and whatever else you guys find."

Brennan narrowed her eyes at the x-ray in her hands. "There are particles lodged between the left triquetral and the capitate."

Zach shrugged slightly. "The M.E. concluded that they were bone fragments dislodged by the tire iron."

Brennan shook her head quickly in disagreement. "No, these radiographic shadows are too opaque for bone."

Booth sighed loudly, reminding us that he was there. "What's that mean?"

"There's something in her skull where her head was bashed," I translated. "But it's not bone fragments."

"The prosecution's theory of the crime does not include foreign matter in the bone," Zach stated mildly.

Brennan lifted her chin slightly and set the abnormal x-ray off to the side to come back to it. "Let's see if those shadows are really bone fragments or something else."

"Like what?" Booth asked.

Brennan sighed in irritation. "Let's pretend we're objective scientists and not indulge in conjecture." I snickered. Burn! "Zach, get together a basic crime scene analysis kit and get a driver to take you over to Greenbelt Park. Holly, please go with him. I want you to take pictures of the area where the body was found – ground covering, paved areas…"

Booth crossed his arms. "Why does he need a driver?"

"Well, I don't have a license and he probably has some other reason," I said, feeling like maybe Booth should have been able to figure this out on his own.

"I can't drive," Zach said bluntly.

Booth raised his eyebrows and scoffed. "You're a genius who can't drive?"

Zach took a step away from Booth and his voice rose defensively. "If you knew what I know about structural design, you wouldn't drive, either."

Booth's cell phone beeped and buzzed while Brennan took several steps closer to me. "Stay here for a moment while Zach puts together the equipment. You should take this file-" she handed me a folder of the pictures taken by the FBI – "-And get photos of the surrounding areas so that we can contextualize the materials we found."

"Makes sense," I agreed. "And since I won't be here, you should take this." I passed her the autopsy file.

Booth lifted his cell phone to his ear. "Booth… Yes, I'll be right there." He pushed the 'end call' button and looked up at Brennan. "That was April Wright's father."

"A murder victim's dad called you?" Brennan asked, planting her feet in the ground and not-so-subtly demanding further explanation.

"His wife's a wreck," Booth added. "They heard that Amy's angling for a last-minute reprieve."

Hodgins gave Booth a skeptical look. "And why did he call you?"

"Because Booth was the agent that arrested Howard Epps in the first place," Brennan answered for Booth.

Booth clapped his hand to his forehead. "You know, I'm pretty sure that evidence is not in the file."

"Actually, it is," I told him, holding up April Wright's basic file. The crime committed against her was murder and the arresting officer was Special Agent Seeley Booth. "But Dr. Brennan hasn't seen it yet."

Brennan shrugged, like she didn't see why the information bothered Booth so much. "Earlier, you said 'it's a phone number that we found on the girl.'"

"Wait," Hodgins chuckled. "You're trying to save someone you arrested for murder?"

Booth tried to glare, but it didn't work out very well for him. He was too anxious at the moment to be able to do so effectively, so he closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with his fingertips. "Alright, you know, I think he did it. I think this scumbag bashed April Wright to death with a tire iron."

Brennan's eyes softened and she looked down at him from the platform in sympathy. "We've found some anomalies in the prosecution's case. Do you want us to stop now, before these anomalies become meaningful?"

Booth slowly shook his head. His morals wouldn't allow it, now that there was reasonable doubt in his head. "No. Stay on it. I've… got to get going."

"You guys are pathetic," Angela's voice rang around the lab as she complained during her entry. A man around her age, maybe a year or two earlier, trailed behind her, looking around in interest. "It's Friday night."

"There's nothing pathetic about pro bono work on a death penalty case," Hodgins disagreed with her, frowning and kind of insulted.

Angela took a deep breath before motioning to the man behind her and smiling. "Everybody, this is Troy."

Troy waved shyly. "Hey, how you doing?"

"Tired, but I'll live," I answered with a pleasant smile. _Angela, you are so lucky I like you. _"Thanks for asking."

Angela smiled sweetly at Troy. "Could you please just wait here one second?"

"Yeah," Troy nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Angela smiled at him again, a genuine smile, before scanning her ID and climbing up the platform stairs and making a beeline straight for Brennan. "Why did you call me in? Look at this guy. He's cuter than a monkey with a puppy."

"Uh-huh." Why do I have a suspicion that Brennan only agreed to placate the artist? "I really, really need you to do texture analysis on seven-year-old x-rays," Brennan said, giving Angela her best 'please' expression.

Angela pouted. "But I am on a date. With Troy." She nudged Brennan when she didn't elicit the desired reaction. "He's a man. Wave." Brennan rolled her eyes but gave Troy a reluctant, short wave. "What's the big, steaming, gigantic rush?"

"Well," I shrugged casually. "A man is scheduled to die in twenty-six hours, and we thought that he might like to know the results before then. Of course, I could be entirely wrong, but it was just a thought."

Angela paused for a moment before she had to give in. "Good one," she conceded, sounding surprised we'd actually had a good reason. She turned back to Troy, apologetic. "Troy, sweetie, I've got a few things to do around here. Do you mind just hanging out for a little while?"

Troy looked around the domed lab and up at the balcony outside the second-floor offices overlooking the platform. "Um, sure, no problem. Let me just call the restaurant, and tell them we'll be late. What do you think, half an hour?"

Angela winced. "You'd better make in an hour, minimum."

"Okay," Troy agreed, sounding disappointed but not mad.

Zach came back into view, lugging a crime scene bag. I raised an eyebrow as he passed the platform before jumping down both steps and bounding over to him, taking the bag from him and carrying it myself. It was kind of heavy, I'll give him that, but watching him try to carry it had been funny and laughing doesn't seem very appropriate for the circumstances.

* * *

><p>I let Zach carry the camera while I carried the bag back to the car. "I think we've got as many pictures as we need," I said, even more exhausted now than I'd been previously due to all of the walking and stumbling in the darkness. "Which car's ours?" There were several in the parking lot.<p>

"This one," Zach said, leading to a four-door black vehicle. "That's our parking number and the sign with our gate on it is right up there." He pointed for example.

I looked down as I waited for him to open the trunk and stared blankly at the yellow numbers painted on the sidewalk before my weary mind made a connection. "Hold on," I said, backing up and setting the bag down. "Zach, come take a picture of this," I said, pointing down at the sidewalk.

Five minutes later, we were in the car, both of us triumphant and satisfied with our work. Zach held out his phone, on speaker, as it dialed the lab. "_Hodgins,"_ the entomologist answered.

"Most recondite codes have a complex numerical cipher," Zach promptly began to explain.

Through the phone, Hodgins sounded exasperated and mildly annoyed. "_That's a fun factoid, Zach. Thank you."_

"1-2-4-0-2-5-1-0-2-2-1," Zach quickly recited. "That's the number they found on the victim."

The scientist's voice was slightly mean. "_Yeah, you're the one with the photographic memory. I'm the one that's good with the ladies."_

"But here's the thing," I added, grinning at the phone. "It's not a phone number." Zach snapped the phone closed, ending the call.

* * *

><p>"What did you find?" Hodgins asked Brennan. His voice just barely met my ears as I carried Zach's equipment bag up to the platform. Repaying the favor of me carrying his things, Zach swiped his card and let me on the platform this time.<p>

"A shard of bone," Brennan answered, sounding confused and surprised, and a little bit bemused at the coroner's apparent incompetence. "How'd they miss that?"

"They're not as good as we are," Hodgins replied, with more than a little smugness. He slid Brennan's Petri dish under his microscope. "At forty times magnification… Well, that's not bone," he disagreed as he looked through the lenses. "It's organic. Mineral, possible quartz."

I cleared my throat and Zach started talking. "We were out taking the pictures you needed and there was a sign and numbers on the ground and we thought 'why assume a quasi-randomly generated-'" Whoa! Can this guy talk fast or what? I could follow, yeah, but he wasn't even stopping for breath!

Hodgins laid his hands firmly on Zach's shoulders and gave him a stern look. "Zach, when you talk that fast, human being can't hear you," he said slowly.

I reached out to Brennan's clipboard. "May I?" I asked. She nodded, surprised, and handed me that and her pen. I flipped the sheet she was using over to a blank, fresh white page and wrote out the supposed phone number found on April Wright, and then underneath it, I rewrote it, but spaced the numbers differently in accordance to how Zach and I had found them throughout the park. It had taken us nearly another half hour to find everything in the dark, but once we did, we totally felt like geniuses. Well, I did, anyway.

"The number they found on the girl," Zach started to explain again. "1-2-4-0-2-5-1-0-2-2-1. Everyone assumed it was a phone number. But what if, instead of spacing the numbers like a phone number, you space them differently?"

I flipped the clipboard up and held it so that my hurried numbering was visible to the scientists. "We were in the park taking pictures, and I happened to notice the parking space was numbered. We were in spot 221. So, we backtracked without the car, back towards the entrance of the park. First we left picnic area ten. And then we left through gate twenty-five." Going into the park, it would make 2-5-1-0-2-2-1, which was all but the first four of the letters in the sequence.

"Seems like more than a coincidence," Brennan nodded, following along.

"1-2-4-0, what do those represent?" Hodgins asked.

"The time," Zach answered for him this time, nearly breathless with excitement. "Twelve forty. It's when she was going to meet whoever she was meeting."

"It fits with the timeline," Hodgins said, considering it seriously. He looked to Brennan, almost looking proud. "He's weird, but he's smart." He snuck a look at me. "What's your excuse, Xena?"

I glared slightly. "What, I can't be smart, too? I totally haven't been working with a renowned forensics team sporadically for the past month or anything."

Brennan interrupted, getting back on topic before Hodgins and I got in an argument or before he made me lose my temper. I doubted he meant it, but I'm not always good at getting cues. I'm a little defensive sometimes. "April Wright was setting up a date."

"Probably with whoever she had sex with," I agreed proudly.

"Good job, Holly, Zach," Brennan praised. A smile flickered over my face. I hate seeming like I care about other peoples' approval, but if I'm honest, I do feel good about myself when Brennan gives praise to me.

"I've got something!" Hodgins exclaimed, the second time he glanced down his microscope lenses. "It's not quite so idiot savant," he added, throwing looks at Zach and I. "But it's aggregate gravel."

"What if the rest of the shadows on the x-rays were also gravel?" Brennan theorized.

"There was no gravel where her body was found," Zach said, frowning at the inconsistency. "It's all grass."

"Then it was a body dump," I sighed. "Chances are she did die in the park, but not where her body was found."

"We have to exhume our victim's body," Brennan decided, making a face that reflected her feelings of confusion and sadness.

* * *

><p>Angela insisted that I grab a nap on the couch; less than thirty hours to go and we were at a stopping point until we got an exhumation warrant, anyway. When I woke up, it was about six in the morning. Brennan called Booth and through her, Booth told me the address of the Wright family; April's mother and father. I took a cab to the right block and then found the numerical address on the side of the house, and then loitered around until Booth showed up in his SUV nearing seven thirty. I smiled grimly in greeting; I wasn't excited about talking to the family. There was no way that they would be happy about it.<p>

I was right. They didn't tell us to sit down or offer us cookies and milk, by any means. I undid the ponytail in my hair, letting my newly-blonde tangles fall down in favor of using the band to snap around my wrist to control my temper. I had to hand it to Hodgins; it was a good idea. It worked as a distraction, so that I could pay attention but expand my patience. All I've heard since I came in fifteen minutes ago are rude quips about my age and ineligibility to work a murder case, and their griping and moaning about the appeal to the FBI regarding the stay in execution.

"It's very stressful waiting for this to all be over, and now we hear Epps' lawyers are trying for a reprieve!" April's father, a kind of short guy with a receding hairline and a button-up flannel shirt, restated his argument for the twelfth time since we came in.

"I heard." Booth dipped his head in respect, being submissive to their frustration.

"He got himself a young lawyer from the Innocence Project," the family's lawyer, David Ross, stated, his opinion on the Innocence Project apparently very low. "They don't consider the families of the victims."

The rubber band was no longer enough and I snapped. "Listen, I get that your daughter was murdered, and I get that your clients are how you get your money, but maybe you should all just shut up and think about what you're saying before it comes out of your mouths!" I shouted. I took a breath and explained myself. "I'm sorry April was killed, but Howard Epps was not necessarily the murderer, and right now you don't care so much about her killer as you do the scapegoat for your grief. If Epps is the murderer, then he will be executed. If not, then an innocent man doesn't die. Now I don't care how your emotions fit into this, but this is how it works!"

Mrs. Wright sniffed, looking at me haughtily. "And now the bureau is hiring a little brat to work the case. No one will be prosecuted if they don't get their act together."

I rolled my eyes. "Listen lady, I bet you don't know the first thing about the FBI, so why don't you get off of my back and start worrying about your own?"

"You remember our lawyer, David Ross," Mr. Wright said, stepping to the side and motioning to the lawyer. "Agent Booth is the investigator who caught Epps."

Mrs. Wright sniffed again, holding a tissue up in her hand. "Is this ever going to be over?"

"I understand how difficult this is, Mrs. Wright," Booth said patiently. _Ugh! Stop babying her! She's a big girl!_

"Epps killed my daughter! You believe that, don't you, Agent Booth?"

"Yes, ma'am. I haven't changed my mind."

"He deserves to die for what he did!" Cried Mrs. Wright.

"The jury thought so, the judge thought so. All of these appeals-" Mr. Wright shook his head angrily at his carpet.

"Yet whether or not he is executed is not your decision," I reminded them with a glare, at the same time as Booth said, "It's part of the process, that's all."

"Each effort to stop his execution is more and more desperate," Ross assured the couple. "This one's not going to work, either. It's the third time they've launched an appeal, and it's going to be the third time they fail."

"You're very sure of yourself, aren't you?" I deadpanned.

Mrs. Wright held a small pink picture frame in her trembling hands. "It's the last picture we have of April."

"She wanted to be a lawyer." April's father wrapped his arm around his wife and his eyes glistened as he looked down at his daughter's photo. "David was her role model. He gave her a job at his firm on the weekends."

"She was a good worker." Ross smiled slightly in reminiscence. I looked over at him, surprised. Yes, he might have been a family friend and worked for him, but a law firm has more than one assistant in seven years. He was clearly fond of her, although that can be chalked up to having known her for a while beforehand, and for having been friends with her family.

"She was a beautiful girl," Booth said softly.

Mrs. Wright sobbed, her shoulders heaving. "If you'll excuse us a moment," her husband said, ushering her back to the kitchen to console her in privacy.

I turned to Booth, not too worried about the lawyer. He'd have access to the information if he was working the Wright case, anyway. "Since we didn't really have time to catch up outside, I'll fill you in. Dr. Brennan was going to meet with Amy-"

"I don't like the sound of that," Booth interrupted, looking almost scared. Hah! The attractive scientist and the attractive lawyer bonding over trading insulting comments about someone they both know. Must be his worst nightmare. Well, figuratively. Not literally, because he was a sniper, but still…

"I bet you don't," I scoffed. "Dr. Brennan is going to try to convince the judge to issue an exhumation order."

"What? Why?" Booth asked, keeping his naturally-projecting voice down lower so that the Wrights wouldn't hear. The lawyer stood off to the side. It looked like he was giving us the benefit of a semi-private discussion by looking at a newspaper on the coffee table, but he was trying to read it upside down. Idiot. He was obviously eavesdropping.

"There's evidence suggesting April may not have been killed where her body was found. They need to see April's remains to find more evidence pointing to the scene being a set instead of a kill ground. Oh, and get this – Zach and I decoded the phone number-"

"What." Booth didn't even ask a question, instead just giving me this really weird look. "Who decodes phone numbers?"

"No one. That would be pointless," I said, waving it off. "It's not actually a phone number. It's a time and place in the park. April met someone in the park where she was murdered on that night."

"So she met someone in the park…" Booth murmured, more to himself as he stored the information for further use. "What does that prove?"

"If we can find DNA on April that doesn't belong to Epps, then we have enough reason to convince the judge for a stay in the execution while a complete investigation is launched." I blinked; I hadn't even realized that I'd stopped separating myself from them anymore. I was saying 'we'.

"Is this about April?" Mr. Wright asked. I turned; they were back from the kitchen, Mrs. Wright with her face covered by her hands. "What's happened now?" The man moved his hand to his wife's back.

"Apparently some new evidence has surfaced," Booth said, putting his hands in his pockets.

"What kind of evidence?" Mrs. Wright asked curiously, rubbing at a tear on her cheek. Ugh, I hate the home visits. There's so much crying and I'm not comfortable with those kinds of emotions.

"Evidence that may further support the execution or go against it," I said evenly with a small shrug.

Ross looked up from the upside-down newspaper and stepped forward, clasping his hands in front of him and dipping his head courteously to the Wrights. "Why don't you give me a few minutes with Agent Booth and Miss Kirkland? Let me evaluate these new developments."

Mr. Wright nodded slightly in consent. "Let's get some coffee," he told his wife, gently shoving her back to the kitchen.

"Um, I'd recommend herbal tea," I said with a mild tone. "The natural components have relaxing effects, and if you have chamomile or honey, then that will help your sinuses," I told Mrs. Wright. It's true; although I'm not planning on having children, if I had a daughter that was murdered, I'd rather cry over a cup of tea than coffee. Besides, I hate the headaches that come after crying, and the herbs in most tea bags soothe that. April's mother nodded to me to show that she had heard, and Booth gave me an amused look as they walked away. "What?" I said, raising my shoulders. "I was trying to help."

Ross sat down on the couch, relaxing against the leather cushions behind him and he made a sweeping gesture with his hand, inviting us to do the same. I shrugged and slowly sat on the edge of the sofa across from him. I wasn't sure if it was a trick or something to get us to be nice. "So, this new evidence." Ross jerked his thumb behind him, at the kitchen. "Is this something they can bear to hear?"

"Well, it concerns the person April had sexual relations with the night she was murdered," Booth answered carefully.

"The judge ruled that irrelevant," Ross pointed out, raising his eyebrows.

"Stupid judge," I commented.

"It's always hung there as a question." Booth said slowly, choosing his words very carefully. "It's always the basis of the appeal. If we could just ID the guy, this whole issue would just disappear."

"It was sex in a car," Ross said dismissively. "It was probably another teenager. Some kid that was too scared to come forward."

I narrowed my eyes at him and the sideways glance Booth sent me told me he'd noticed the same thing. "Nobody said anything about sex taking place in her car," I said, the accusation in my tone painfully clear even though my voice remained civil.

"It was a parking lot," Ross said, puffing a breath like he thought that now I was just grasping at straws. "I assume the sex act took place inside a car." I was about to make a list for him of all the other places in the park that April could have had sex, but stopped myself when I remembered the scenery and realized it would be a very, very long list if I encompassed just that particular gate. That, and I noticed the way he crossed his arms, like he was shielding himself. I kept my expression neutral and yet made sure I would remember it. I could _so _use this to blackmail him for information later. He knew something he wasn't telling; I wouldn't actually be surprised now if he was the guy that April had sex with.

"So, when April worked for your law firm on the weekends, what did she do, filing?" Booth guessed, tapping his fingers on his leg in a four-beat rhythm.

"That's right," Ross said.

"And who was with her in the office?" I asked with my best innocent expression. I mean, someplace where they do confidential or difficult work, like a law firm, no way a simple filing aid gets left unsupervised. Then again, I could barely talk; Brennan had left me in her office with Booth after the Charles Sanders case. She had no way of knowing that Booth would ask about my history of being abused, but she also had no way of knowing that I wouldn't look through her computer or anything. Of course, I wouldn't; I respect her and her privacy, but she barely knows me. Hell, no one at the Jeffersonian even knows my favorite color.

Ross swallowed visibly. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, a seventeen year old girl, I'm sure you wouldn't just leave her in there all by herself." Booth talked casually, like he was asking what the lawyer thought the weather would be like tomorrow. "What, you can't remember? I'm sure the security logs will be able to tell us something. Refresh my memory, Mr. Ross – where were you the night that April was killed? Say, around twelve thirty?"

Ross looked between Booth and I, now looking as though he realized that he was way out of his depth. "Now's the time that I ask for my lawyer and say nothing," he stated calmly, although his tapping foot was anything but.

Driving away from the Wright house not long after, I clicked my seat belt in place. "Wow. That interrogation was seriously _Criminal Minds _worthy. And I don't mean like the lame little ones that the locals try to head up, I mean the ones that come from Reid, Hotch, Prentiss, Rossi, and Morgan."


	22. The Man on Death Row, Part Three

"_I did not kill April Wright. There are good people out there… you know, people who believe me. People who know I did not kill the girl, because they saw the evidence." _Angela paused the clip of Howard Epps' interview, shaking her head uncertainly.

"I honestly think he's innocent," Amy stated, her eyes conveying her sincerity. "Don't you?"

I whistled lowly and inhaled, giving Amy a doubtful look. "I'm not saying for certain either way, but if being creepy was a crime, then he'd have been executed a long time ago."

Brennan blinked at the TV. "I don't like to form any conclusions before all the evidence is in," she told Amy after a second.

Angela looked down to the platform and then looked back quickly. "April Wright's body just arrived," she told us.

I waved my hand around Angela's office, blocking Amy from the doorway for a moment. "Hey, uh, you might be more comfortable up here. Sorry, it's just, you know. Dead girl's body…"

Amy seemed surprised, but she nodded at me in acceptance of what I was saying and tentatively took a seat on Angela's couch, looking around to examine the many different artworks that Angela had in her office. This being taken care of, I turned to the balcony and walked out and down the stairs to the main floor. Brennan was already to the platform, and luckily for me, I was close enough to the platform to break into a sprint and get up the stairs before the security system reset itself from Brennan's clearance. April Wright's ashen body lay motionless on the examination table, with a thin white sheet lain over her.

"Oh, God!"

I looked up, surprised. Up in the lounge loft, Angela's new boyfriend – Troy – was leaning over the railing and had a look of horror on his face as he looked at the teenager's corpse.

Angela flinched. "Don't look, sweetie," she told him, looking up at him nervously.

"You're not an artist," he yelled down from the loft. "You're a freak. You people are all freaks!" He shook his head in disgust and pushed off from the rail, storming off.

Brennan and I looked to Angela, both of us concerned about her feelings. Angela just smiled tensely, but it was so obviously fake it wasn't even worth it. Angela swallowed, shaking her head very slightly to us, like she was trying to tell us not to worry. "Uh… This job is so hard to describe online," she said, lifting her shoulders for a moment. She sounded like she was trying to sound casual, but she just sounded hurt.

My hands balled into fists. "I'm going to go get a drink," I lied, keeping my voice carefully even. Angela would likely try to stop me if she got the idea of what I was going to do. "I'll be back in a minute." Luckily for me, the vending machines with sodas and water were up in the loft, where Troy had just disappeared back to. Without waiting for a response, I turned on my heel and calmly walked down the platform steps and up to the stairs leading to the balcony. Up there, the balcony circled around the dome shape of the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal lab, and across from the stairs was the loft, the comfy little place for relaxation with couches and a shaggy carpet and sometimes little doughnuts up for grabs on the coffee table, along with a little kitchenette to the side.

Troy was getting his things together. It looked like he'd been on the computer. I poked him roughly in the shoulder and he turned around, glaring at me. "What do you want?"

"I want you to apologize to Angela," I said simply.

He scoffed, then grinned stupidly like it was a joke. "Yeah. That's not happening, chick."

I struck him across the face with the back of my hand. I was already being protective of the employees of the Jeffersonian; might as well not just go halfway. "Don't yell, don't be loud. This doesn't have to be violent, because really, all I'm telling you to do is act like a halfway decent human being." Troy cupped his cheek and stared at me.

Then it dawned on him and something clicked in his head. "You're that girl in the media!"

"Bravo," I said, sarcastically clapping my hands together. _That took him a while. _"So you know that I'm not afraid of violence and you also probably know that I can overpower you very, very easily." Troy watched me apprehensively. "They are not freaks. They are incredibly intelligent individuals who happen to work in a field that is taboo in this society. Right now, they are working to possibly save an innocent man from execution. You will apologize to Angela."

Troy opened his mouth to complain. "You haven't got any authority over me."

I looked back at him, completely serious. "I am not opposed to holding you over the railing by your ankles. Actually, it sounds like a really good idea to me. So here's what you're going to do; either you're going to go down there right now and apologize to her. You can still go out with her tonight if you think you can manage to act halfway respectable. If not, then go home. Don't say anything to her. Take the rest of the day to get your act together, and then call her in the morning and apologize. This is not up for debate. And remember; I will hang you over the railing by your ankles."

With that threat in place, I smiled sweetly at him, content with my own actions. That said, I turned and got a dollar bill from my wallet, and bought a plastic bottle of water from a vending machine. When I picked it up from the tray, I passed Troy and smirked at him on my way back around the balcony to the stairs down.

"Alright," I said without giving away what I'd done. I climbed up the stairs to the platform as Booth swiped his ID card for me. He must have just gotten here when I'd been in the loft. I stood away from the remains, since I had the bottle of water. "What did I miss?"

"We've got several pieces of foreign material lodged in the bone," Brennan updated me.

Hodgins jerked his head over to the microscope. "It's the same stuff we found in the shard."

"Which is consistent with the arm being dragged through gravel after the attack," Angela added. She still seemed kind of sad, but she was also trying to hide it, like she wasn't willing to have everyone else feel bad for her. I can really relate to that, so I didn't bring it up.

Booth held a plastic evidence bag in his hand down at his side. "And I got a warrant to search the house of the guy April Wright had sex with the night she was murdered."

"So what did you find?" Brennan asked, motioning at the sealed evidence bag.

"Underwear," Booth said with a cringe of distaste. "Can you people run a comparison on the hair?"

Hodgins sighed loudly and he and Zach both turned to each other at the same time. After a brief best out of three game of rock paper scissors, Zach groaned and took the bag from Booth, going over to the microscope and Petri dishes. I grinned. Who needs professionalism?

Booth made the mistake of looking to the exam table. Blinking once, he averted his eyes to his shoes and cleared his throat. "Is that April Wright?" He asked slowly.

Brennan didn't catch his response to the girl's corpse. "Yes, and it looks like she wasn't killed where she was found."

Booth looked up, but his gaze was forced away from the table whenever it wandered too close for his comfort. "Then where was she murdered?" He asked.

Brennan frowned slightly, her lips pulling down as she looked to the entomologist for an answer. "We've got microscopic particles beaten into the skull. Were those ever identified?"

Hodgins picked up a file from an evidence box and sifted through the papers. After a few seconds, he found the report that he was looking for. He shook his head slowly as he came to the conclusion from the file. "According to the autopsy report, no."

Zach looked up from the microscope. "It's a visual match," he called over to Brennan.

Brennan looked over to Angela. "Will you backstop him on that?" Angela gave a long, quiet sigh and moved over to Zach's side. The graduate pushed off with his feet and the wheeled chair moved to the side, giving the artist room to look through the microscope.

"Where's Amy?" Booth asked, trying to keep his thoughts organized and all of his information together.

"She's in Angela's office," I answered with a small smile. "I told her she'd probably be more comfortable up there."

"I concur with Zach," Angela agreed, standing up straight again. "We have a visual match on the pubic hair." She crossed her arms and took a step away from the microscope.

"Great. Visual match. But we'd need a DNA match to stay the execution," I reminded everyone. I don't really want to rain on the parade, but I also feel like, all things considered, we need to stay focused and remember that we need solid, indisputable facts in order for Howard Epps' execution to be stopped.

Brennan let her hands fall to her sides, shaking her head in disappointment and frustration. "I don't know what else we can do," she stressed.

I looked to Booth nervously. "Well, if you tell the judge that you don't still think Howard Epps is guilty… since you're the arresting officer, it has to mean something. That might buy time," I suggested after a moment of hesitation.

Brennan turned sharply to look at Booth, seeming startled. "Have you changed your mind?"

"No!" Booth exclaimed. He pushed a hand through his hair and started again. "Look, I have doubts that the guy should be executed, but…" he sighed loudly again. "Bones, Holly, let's get Amy and go see the judge." He extended a hand to me out of habit, but then recalled that I don't really do the touch thing and instead offered the hand-holding option to Brennan, who didn't even notice. Ouch.

* * *

><p>Judge Cohen had another man with him when Booth, Amy, Brennan, and I arrived at his house. I'm not entirely sure who he is, but the judge is calling him Mr. Carlyle, and I think he's the judge's consultant on Amy's pleads. A legal advisor of some sort would be my guess.<p>

For the second evening in a row, the judge had been woken up. Aside from being irritated, he didn't seem to care much – apparently he doesn't care enough about the case to put on something besides a bath robe. Then again, to be fair, we are sort of in his house at night on short notice. But really, it's only around ten at night. Not too late.

Judge Cohen poured himself a drink before screwing the top of the wine bottle back on. He left it on the counter (who needs a refrigerator anymore?) and lifted the champagne glass, propping himself up against the kitchen island. "At my age, a man needs a good night's sleep," he said. His words were sharp in annoyance. "Lack of sleep clouds judgment."

"You know what else clouds judgment?" I asked with a raised eyebrow, before nodding at the champagne glass in his hand. "Alcohol." The judge scowled at me. "Truth is truth, man."

Amy pushed herself forward, her hands clasped in front of her. Her curly ginger hair bounced as her heels clicked on the tile floor. "If you stay the execution, Judge, I promise you'll sleep like a baby," she swore.

Cohen took a long drink of his wine before asking dryly, "Mr. Carlyle, what does the prosecution think?"

"This is a waste of the state's time, your Honor," Carlyle promptly responded, giving Amy a look of contempt. He seemed to have practiced saying this in his head several times. "Miss Morton is recycling old evidence, just presenting it in a different way in a last-ditch attempt to keep Howard Epps from being executed. She's an ideologue."

"That's true," Amy willingly conceded. "But it doesn't mean I'm not right. This case doesn't add up."

Cohen coughed. "You-" He motioned to Brennan carelessly. "Brilliant scientist lady. Talk to me about this bone shard."

"It indicates the body was dragged to the location where it was later discovered," Brennan said. I could tell she had originally wanted to say something else, but had narrowed it to a simpler explanation. "That, plus the gravel-"

"Common gravel. I'm not convinced," Cohen waved it away. "What about the hair?"

"It's a visual match," Brennan reported. "That narrows the statistical probability to-"

"DNA?" The judge interrupted. What is it with him and interrupting her?

"Ten days," Amy answered this time. "We'll have it in ten days."

"And what about this man that the FBI's taken into custody?" Cohen strained to remember correctly and Booth and I shared a look. Why was he drinking alcohol while debating a stay in an execution? Oh, God. I'm fearing for my legality now. I hope not all judges are this reckless. "David Ross? Has he confessed to sleeping with her?"

"No," Amy answered, her expression falling as she realized that her case wasn't as solid as she had thought.

Carlyle interfered again. I sent him a short glare; he is acting very unlikeable. Then again, I'm obviously biased on Amy and Brennan's side. "Even if the DNA says David Ross slept with the girl, it doesn't prove he killed her."

Cohen listened to Carlyle. I guess that's to be expected, since Carlyle is an advisor, but still, it's annoying. "Let's stick with new facts, Miss Morton."

"Your Honor, at least give us enough time to find David Ross' car," Amy requested, her voice bordering on pleading. "There could be evidence of murder-"

"Could be?" Cohen repeated. "I can't stop an execution because there _could be _evidence."

"Judge Cohen, I have the arresting officer right here!" I have to give Amy points for determination. If I were in need of a defense lawyer, I'd request her. "The primary investigator!"

"Agent Booth." Cohen nodded at the FBI agent in the first direct acknowledgment he'd given him since we arrived. "Have you suddenly decided that Howard Epps is not guilty?"

"No."

"Booth!" Amy hissed.

"I think there are doubts," Booth added seriously. "And when it comes to an execution, there shouldn't be any doubts."

Carlyle sneered at Booth. "He doesn't have doubts, he has cold feet."

Booth seemed like he was going to retaliate. Sensing that that probably wouldn't help his case, I did it for him. It's one thing for a federal agent to threaten someone, especially when he's trying to get a judge to stay an execution sentence; it's completely different for a rebellious teenager to threaten someone when he's harassing people that she holds allegiances with, however temporary. "You'd better not think that I won't knock you around just because we're in a judge's kitchen," I snarled, balling my hands into fists.

"You see?" Cohen tilted his head at me. "You lose sleep, you get cranky, and judgment suffers. It's not enough."

"Oh, believe me, your Honor, my mind is perfectly clear on this one."

"Your Honor, you can't dismiss this so easily!" Amy protested.

"Easily?" Cohen repeated. "I allowed you to exhume that girl's remains. Do you think I did that easily? We all feel the weight of a capital case, Miss Morton, but the law is clear. Unless there is proof of grievous incompetence by counsel, or a denial of legitimate and definitive factual certainties, my hands are tied." The judge shrugged, almost apologetic.

Walking out of the judge's home a few minutes later was a tired affair. Laden with disappointment and exhaustion from barely sleeping in the past two and a half days, I nearly stumbled over the porch steps, but caught myself on the handrail. Amy followed, her steps admittedly slower than they had been. Her polished dress shoes ground against the sidewalk a little, and she didn't have as much bounce to her walk.

"I'll go out to the prison and tell Epps," Amy sighed, running her hand through her ginger hair.

Brennan held her hand over her mouth as she tried to stifle a large yawn. "I'll take another look at the skull, to see if we didn't miss anything."

"Bones…" Booth started, but trailed off, like the thought had gotten away from him.

"The particulates in the skull still haven't been analyzed yet," Brennan added, the vigor of her steps renewing slightly.

Amy slammed the passenger door of the SUV as she got in, hurrying to buckle up the seat belt while Booth reached for the gear shift. "This is so barbaric," she cried out angrily, bringing her fist down on her knee while Brennan and I fastened our seat belts in the back seat. "When are they going to put a stop to the damn death penalty?"

"I believe in the death penalty," Brennan contradicted, looking forwards to Amy.

The lawyer swiveled in her seat, her eyes widening in both surprise and disgust. "What?" She asked, like she couldn't believe what she'd just heard.

"I do, too," I agreed, backing up the anthropologist. "There are some people that shouldn't be allowed to live their lives, even if it is in a bleak prison cell. War lords who forced children to become killing machines or watch their family be murdered. Some serial killers actually force their victims to watch as they mutilate and kill them, because fear and pain is what gets them off. How is it not fair that they receive death, as well? We're already being overly nice by letting the lethal injection have a numbing property, and by making an electrical execution quick."

"There are certain people that shouldn't be in this world. The people who hacked hundreds of innocent children to death in Rwanda, beheaded them in their desks at school." Brennan's expression was hard to describe; she was obviously abhorred by the killers that we were bringing up, but she didn't seem to have any malevolence towards Amy. I think she was just having trouble understanding Amy's point of view. "The people who did that? They _should _be executed."

Amy shook her head but didn't make it an outright argument. She turned herself back around in the seat and let her head fall harshly back against the headrest. "So why do you care about Epps?" She demanded.

"Because the facts have to add up," Brennan answered with no uncertainty. "Drop me at the lab, please."

Total creeper in a dimly-lit death row cell or a group of relatively-friendly scientists in a brightly-lit lab? That's hardly even a choice! "Me, too."

* * *

><p>Hodgins held a small metal tray with a few Petri samples while he brought Brennan up to speed. I was updated, too, but that's probably more because I'm standing there. Angela was on the scientist's right, her arms crossed, yet a small, satisfied smile played across her face. Zach was at Hodgins' other side, his head drooping slightly. This lack of sleep is getting to everyone on this case. Angela's pretty brown eyes had dark circles beginning to make an appearance. "These are slivers of metal found on the skull," Hodgins said, pointing at one of the sample jars.<p>

"Probably from the tire iron," Zach edified, blinking several times as he stood up straight once again.

I looked into the jars curiously. Without a magnifying glass, I wouldn't have really been able to distinguish any of them, and even then, my knowledge on entomology is spotty. "Is that blood?" I blurted the first thing that came to mind when I saw the red sample.

"Silt," Hodgins corrected, not unkindly. "I'm breaking it down. It contains traces of two chemicals-"

"Anthracene and fluoranthene," Zach promptly recited.

"I've scanned in all the x-rays and built a 3-D model," Angela reported smugly. "Troy would have liked that. Stupid suck-up."

I raised my eyebrows, hoping that no one would correctly interpret the sly smile visiting my face. "Oh? What did he do to suck up?"

"He called on the phone and said he was sorry," Angela scoffed. "After that tantrum, a sorry and another invitation to a date. Please, as if that would work." I grinned to myself. I'm glad to see that Angela isn't letting Troy's idiocy bring her down; she really doesn't deserve to have to deal with that.

Brennan nodded in approval of Angela's words. "I also found more material in the fractures along the sagittal suture," she told Hodgins, unsure whether or not he'd already categorized it yet.

"It's pollen," Hodgins said with a tight smile. This is good; in this case, pollen could be absolutely no help at all, or it could be the key to figuring out what happened to April Wright. Hopefully, it's the latter.

* * *

><p>Amy and Booth had perfect timing. They got back from visiting Epps just as Angela's scenario equipment finished warming up and preparing for use. When Hodgins had the results and shared them with Angela to make a presentation for the less scientifically-gifted (no offense, Booth, no one can be perfect), I beckoned the two up into Angela's office again for the entomologist's big reveal.<p>

"The pollen is from spartina alterniflora," Hodgins announced, a satisfied little smirk on his face. His eyes were bright, like he was internally thinking, _we did it! _His merriment wasn't shared, though, because Booth and Amy just sort of looked at him like they were waiting for him to continue. "It's more commonly known as smooth cord grass," he added, deflating slightly.

Amy closed her eyes, aggrieved, and shook her head slightly like she was dispelling a bad thought. "I'm sorry. What does pollen tell us about April Wright's murder?"

"Angela?" Brennan prompted simply. The holographic imager's projection changed to a simple black tire iron. The tool rotated around slowly and the projection zoomed in to the topmost metal cuff, which angled slightly down. A pale, rounded surface materialized in front of it and a light green grass covering surrounded the two. Little pale yellow pollen spores collected on the tire iron as it struck the digitalized cranium. "The murder weapon collected pollen from the surrounding flora. When she was struck, pollen from the murder weapon was deposited in April's skull."

"In this case," I added, "The spores it picked up were from a plant known as spartina alterniflora." I lifted up the map of the area surrounding Chesapeake Bay and unrolled it so that the others could see Hodgins's red circling.

"Which is only found along Chesapeake Bay," Hodgins grinned triumphantly, holding his fist out to Zach for a fist-bump. Zach didn't notice.

Instead, Zach continued to narrow down the locations. "The pollen and silt both showed traces of complex chemicals."

"What does that mean?" Booth asked.

"April Wright was killed, in a marsh, near a chemical plant." Brennan answered, pointing at the map. "And there's only one of those with the same floral array around the bay."

Amy's phone gave a generic little beep and the light flashed orange for a minute. She looked down at the screen, the lighting illuminating her face, and sighed, her eyes darkening. "They've moved Howard Epps to the imminent room."

"What's that?" Angela inquired, looking nervously between Booth and Amy, like she wasn't entirely sure that she was going to like the answer. I'm pretty sure she won't, either.

Booth shoved his hands in his pockets, looking straight into the slowly rotating hologram. "It's where he has his last meal and says goodbye to his family," he explained, his voice quiet. He cleared his throat suddenly and his voice rose. "We need to find the location of that marsh!"

* * *

><p>Brennan and I stood outside the interrogation room, just inside the observation room, watching as David Ross and his own lawyer prepared for the interrogation. Booth was dealing with Cullen and struggling to get the director to grant him the access to metal detectors and a search team. If we find the tire iron, then the likelihood of incriminating or exonerating evidence stays the execution long enough for it to be fully investigated.<p>

I fixed the earpiece into place and combed my blonde hair out over it with my fingers. No matter how many times I think or see it, the blonde surprises me. "I'll make this fast," I promised. "If Booth comes back and I'm not near finished, then I'll leave and we can always get Booth to assign someone else to it, or finish later."

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure we'll figure something out. Our priority right now needs to be finding that tire iron, not interrogating this man," Brennan said, watching Ross curiously through the one-way mirror.

I nodded in acceptance of her words and stepped through the doors, cutting straight to business and taking a seat across from the lawyer and his lawyer. "The hair we found proves that you had sex with April Wright," I stated bluntly. Ross and his lawyer didn't seem at all surprised, although Ross's front seemed to falter for a few seconds. "You're going to be charged with statutory rape."

"But not by you," Ross's lawyer smoothly cut in. "Statutory rape is not a federal crime. Therefore, I am left to assume that you're here to get my client to confess to murder."

"That would be nice," I agreed. "Or you could, too. I mean, as long as someone does, it's all the same to me. There's paper and pencils just outside, I'd be glad to go get some for your written confession," I offered.

"I didn't kill April!" Ross exclaimed, stressing the "did not" part, while his lawyer just gave me an unamused look.

"But you met her in the park," I said, shooting Ross a look that told him to "calm down and listen to story time, sweetheart." "You two got it on… I mean, I can see it now; you're her role model, as her parents said, she wanted to be a lawyer, too… oh, and you're an older man, so that might add some allure… but then she was killed somewhere else, near a chemical plant by the Chesapeake."

"I don't know anything about that," Ross denied. His eyes, although alarmed, also flashed with curiosity and guilt. I couldn't decide what he felt guilty about, but why would he be curious if he'd already known?

"I've been told that you are a minor, however well-versed you are in law," the lawyer said calmly. "So why are you concerned with a murder that occurred when you were ten at the oldest?"

I sent him a careless look. I don't care about the lawyer. As long as I get the answers, I don't need to concern myself with him. Unlike with Shawn's advocate, and the Hanover teenagers' lawyers, something told me that this lawyer was more experienced, and he was probably used to being intimidated. _Don't care about the lawyer. Don't care about the lawyer. Focus on the pedophile. _Yeah, that'll work. "Because shut up, that's why," I told the lawyer evenly before I refocused my attention on Ross. "So you had sex with her. And maybe not for the first time. Let's see... so many ways she could hold that over you. Police, friends, family, clientele. Oh! But I've got it! She threatened to tell her family. A seventeen year old who thinks for herself, having sex with an adult. Now that's illegal, so the police are ruled out. And why would she tell her friends? I mean, they'd never understand completely, and they couldn't do anything. And she wouldn't get direct access to your clients and if she did, well, it's a tragic story about how she's a victim of a domestic case you're working.

"But if she tells her family, then they can tell the police. They can pose it as statutory rape and the police have to lead it up. Of course, nothing like that stays quiet in D.C., so you can't let that happen. It would ruin your life."

"No." Ross shook his head firmly.

"You'd lose your business, professional standing, and you might need to lawyer up, 'specially if she checks into the doctor's to have a rape kit done for evidence-"

"No!" Ross's voice was rising and I knew that I'd gotten to him.

The lawyer's voice was controlled, but irritation was beginning to spill through his dam. "Do not engage with her, David."

"You had motive, which I just spent the past two minutes explaining; you had the means, I mean, you were alone, in the dark, and with a car and a tire iron nearby; and you had the opportunity. Like I said, alone in the dark, where no one would hear her fighting back."

"I didn't kill her!"

I slammed the palms of my hands on the table and leaned forward to him, glaring at him icily. "Then why aren't you helping us find out who did?"

Ross shrank back, surprised. "What?"

"We know you were there!" I said again, repeating my initial sentences. "But by not admitting that you were there that night, not confessing you were with her sexually, you're clouding the issue!"

"So what?" Ross asked, although now he was uncertain, trying to have bravado to shield it. "Epps will still be in jail for the rest of his life."

"We are not discussing the events of that night, Miss Kirkland," the lawyer said, a vein in his temple standing out slightly.

"Actually, dude, I think we are. So since he's obviously not listening to you by talking to me, why don't you shut up and be a good little doll?" I turned myself back to Ross and stared at him, not trying to glare. "You are the only person who can tell us what happened that night. She was _seventeen_, Ross," I said, trying to appeal to his emotions. Appealing to logic and then anger hadn't worked, so maybe guilt would. "She was a seventeen year old young woman, with career aspirations, and a college plan, and she was the daughter of your friends. She looked up to you and you were possibly the last person besides her murderer to see her before her skull was bashed in with a _tire iron_ from her own car."

Ross swallowed. A thin sheen of sweat was on his forehead; probably not just because of the bright lighting. "Okay, look… I just went there that night to talk, okay? That's all," he added, softer.

"This interview is over," the lawyer declared insistently.

"No," Ross disagreed with him. The lawyer puffed, annoyed. _You don't get told "no" often, do you? _"I… it was just to talk. I'm not proud of what happened, alright?" He didn't need to say that part; I could already tell by how he pushed his chair away from me, and crossed his arms and averted his eyes. "I could tell you exactly why it happened, but I'm not proud of it. I shouldn't have let myself get pulled in. I didn't know it was her first time, I didn't know she'd get so upset."

This was working! Hooray for me! Even if he didn't kill April, another man in prison - a pedophile rather than a murderer in this case, but that's details - was another man who wasn't allowed to continue without repercussion. I tried my best to soften my voice. "Aside from it being with the teenage daughter of your friends, it was just sex to you. It was a convenient way to relieve tension."

I was nearly gagging from sympathizing with his actions. He hadn't known her too well, and there was no way that he was willing to commit himself to a serious relationship with her without sex being the main thing. He pretty much used her body for his own recreation.

"On the other hand, she gave her virginity to her parent's friend, who she knew couldn't be in the serious relationship she would have wanted. What would her parents think? What if she'd ended up pregnant? So she ran off, yeah? And you left her there in the park. Alone. At night."

"I looked for her," Ross tried to say. "I waited for her for over two hours." He shrugged, closing his eyes tightly. "Finally I figured that she called somebody to come and get her."

"Was her car still there when you left?" I asked.

"Yes, it was."

"And what time was that?"

Ross shrugged helplessly. "I guess after two a.m.."

"Did you see anyone else?"

Ross nodded slightly, but he still seemed shaken. "Yeah. There was maybe some traffic – all teenagers. After one a.m., there was nothing." He paused. "Look, maybe it is my fault that he got to her," he concluded quietly. "You know, maybe I should go to jail for that."

"Well, don't worry. You can hate yourself about it while you're in jail for statutory rape instead," I assured him with a mockingly cheerful smile.

When I stepped out of the interrogation room, Booth had joined Brennan. I looked up at the FBI agent questioningly and he nodded grimly. "We're all set, kid."

* * *

><p>The sky was pitch black, dotted with tiny white stars as Booth's SUV sped a few miles over the limit to the site. Chesapeake Bay wasn't normally too far away; in daylight, with normal traffic and going the actual speed limit (which was eighty on the highway there), it would only take somewhere around forty minutes from the D.C. area. Outside, it was peaceful; dark, quiet, seemingly unaware that a man was scheduled to die in less than an hour. Inside the vehicle, it most certainly was not. Booth was driving rapidly down the long stretch of road to the exit leading to the search site, where forensics were already supposed to be setting up. Brennan was on the phone with the Jeffersonian, and it was on speaker, while I had a map laid across my lap. The overhead light of the car was on so that I could see and I was sectioning off the area Hodgins had specified into squares, making it into a grid search. More ground would be covered in a more timely manner, and right now, time is of the essence. I'd hand my product off to the search team when we got there.<p>

At the scene, lights flashed. I could barely remember arriving; it was sort of a blur. Lack of sleep and running on pure adrenaline had my mind slightly impaired, but I could work well in the moment. I know that my grid search idea was utilized, and we had ground resonators and four metal detectors. We had shovels in case we needed to dig. I was in long grass that stretched up to my thighs, going between wading through oceans of stalks and dried patches of dirt and soil.

"We got it!" A recovery officer shouted across the terrain from some few meters away. "We got it! We got the tire iron!"

"Bag it for evidence!" I shouted, knowing that it was probably unnecessary. "Collect samples for particulates for the Jeffersonian Institution!"

"Here!" Booth cried from a short distance ahead and to my left. I ran, pushing my way unceremoniously through the reaching grass. I don't feel like swimming in pollen tonight, thanks. "I've got something. It's more than a tire iron."

"I need a shovel!" I heard Brennan start to say. As I pushed my way into their dirt patch, I saw Brennan; she was kneeling down on the ground, and so I hadn't seen her over the ridiculously tall grass stems. Her dark silhouette was emphasized by the moonlight.

"Bones," Booth shushed. "I need a shovel!" He yelled, louder. His voice, deeper than Brennan's, traveled to the other search officers easier. "She's digging here!"

"What's going on?" I asked, unsure whether this was bad or good. "What did you find?" I dropped to my knees beside Brennan, little dust clouds rising up over my jeans before settling. What were they digging up? I hope it's just some trash that happens to be here, but I'm getting an uneasy feeling about this. Call me intuitive; if something bad is about to happen, sometimes I can predict it.

Booth passed Brennan and I each shovels after they were handed to him. "I'm not sure," Brennan said, taking a deep breath as she went straight into digging. I bit down on the handle of my flashlight so that it was still directed at the earth we were digging at, and then ran my hands over the surface. _Oh. _I could just barely feel it; something was buried underneath, packed down under the dirt, and it was big. Like, very big. Human-size big. It was a miracle Brennan had noticed it; either she's more perceptive than I give her credit for or they were using a resonance imager.

I grasped the shovel by the lower half of the handle with both hands and jammed it at a slight angle against the soil, stripping it up by layers and copying Brennan's motions. If something's buried, we don't want to damage it by giving it acupuncture via shovel tip. I blinked back exhaustion, growling to myself and increasing my vigor. _Howard Epps. Murdered girl. Accused lawyer. Stay the execution._

When we made it down about two inches in the soil in a space about two feet wide, it suddenly occurred to me that, with three people working on it, we should have more of this done – especially because the other had gotten coffee at the FBI building and so he should be more awake than Brennan and I. I stopped working and started glaring up at Booth, who was just watching us work with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops. "Are you going to help?" I asked testily.

Booth shrugged slightly, looking down at the dirt we were working through and wincing. "Well, I would, but this is a twelve hundred dollar suit."

"Are you kidding me?!" Brennan nearly shouted.

"We have barely slept in the past two days, and you're worried about your suit?!" I did scream at him, stress and tiredness exploding at once. "What the hell, man?!"

"Get over here!" Brennan ordered indignantly.

Booth tossed his head slightly in dismay, but he clearly didn't want to argue with two angered and tired women. "Fine," he gave in, taking off his jacket. "Can I get a shovel?" Another agent handed him a small, short-handled shovel and he handed the agent his neatly-folded coat. He joined us on the floor, taking care to keep from accidentally scraping dirt into flying up onto his shirt. I cursed at him under my breath.

"Dig gently," Brennan instructed as Booth started shoveling the normal way. "Small layers at a time."

We worked that way for what must have been at least ten minutes. "What would you usually be doing?" I asked. "Either of you." The silence was grating on my nerves and I needed something to focus on to stay awake.

"What?" Booth looked up for a minute.

"If it were a normal weekend and we weren't digging in a marsh for evidence incriminating or exonerating a convicted murderer. I'm guessing this isn't your normal type of party," I clarified, before frowning down at the ground. There was something that wasn't soil… the shovel was encountering resistance. I set the shovel to the side and started using my hands to scratch and bring up dirt. After a supposed seven years, it was packed well in the earth.

"You want to discuss this now?" Booth hissed.

"What was it you said on the Eller case – "You have to offer up something of yourself first," right?" I continued. "Well, normally right now I'd either be on night shift at the bar or asleep."

Brennan tilted her head slightly towards Booth in consideration. "Considering his multiple sex partners…"

"You know, that's none of your business, okay?" Booth growled, bristling. "I'm not having sex with Amy, and I have never, ever cheated on any woman that I've ever been with. Never!"

"Wow. I only asked what you'd normally be doing. Let's get this back on topic before someone _besides _Howard Epps ends up dead."

Booth sighed, and Brennan's shovel clinked as she found something, too. My hands brushed dirt and soil away from something smooth and light colored. I worked diligently while Booth answered. "I'd… be at a movie, or be dancing… I'd be being with somebody that I care about."

I froze in place for only a moment as the object I was trying to unearth came free of a large sum of sediment. The rounded top and the hollowing depressions further down… "Oh!" I cried, pulling back immediately. "Oh God!" I picked up my flashlight from the ground and shone it at where I'd been working. Confirming my anxiety, a half-buried human skull was sticking out of the ground.

I flashed the light over to Brennan and Booth's patch of work. They withdrew themselves when it landed on a nearly completely unearthed cranium, the mandible a few inches away. Booth shivered and looked up, meeting my eyes. "Okay. What the hell is going on here?"

* * *

><p>Five minutes later, the three of us had gotten the attention of the entire recovery team, and now that we'd had the help of a dozen other trained agents, we had unearthed two full skeletons. My guess is that they had been killed and buried in this dump site, and their bodies decomposed in the earth. The dirt had thankfully masked the stench of decay. I'm not made easily nauseous, but I think that would have done it for me tonight.<p>

Brennan seemed disconcerted by their presence, but she was coping with it. She was on her knees by them, observing them for any clues as to identity or the reason that they were there to begin with. "Female… approximately seventeen to twenty-five years old, blunt trauma to the skull." She leaned over the first to contemplate the second from a closer view. "Also female, same approximate age, same type of injury."

"No," I said to myself, my voice breaking slightly. I gave up on professionalism; I don't care how many federal forensics agents are watching me. I let myself fall to my knees. I need sleep, I need to eat something – I can't believe I lasted so long without a real meal – vending machines in the Jeffersonian lab's lounge can only offer so many snacks – and I need to know what is going on here! "This wasn't Ross! If he killed April Wright, then it was a crime of passion, inspired from his fear that she would report him. He doesn't seem at all like a serial offender!"

Brennan's lips tightened and she looked up to Booth, a frown coming to her face. "Both these victims have been dead for at least five years."

"Maybe more than seven?" Booth asked, his voice carrying a note of dread.

Brennan shook her head, looking as helpless as I felt. "Yes."

"Epps," I snarled. "It was Epps!" My nails scratched at the dirt under me and my now bottle-blonde hair was darker from all of the dust in the marsh and from the digging. My muscles were stretched and tensed so tightly that my arms were beginning to ache. "He snatched April from the park after she ran away from Ross and he brought her here – these are his killing grounds!" I don't believe it! I got _played! …By a psychopath! _Well, to be fair to myself, psychopaths are incapable of feeling empathy and therefore feel no guilt, so there were no clear indicators, and they are great liars. But still! The world would be better off if he was dead! And now we have to call in the new bodies and the execution would have to be stopped!

"Why did he take her back to the park?" Brennan asked, her eyebrows furrowing as she tried to keep up and piece things together.

"He watched them have sex; he saw them argue. Epps knew suspicions would fall on Ross, so he took her back," Booth explained, looking disgusted, horrified, disturbed, and crestfallen.

"And stole her car," Brennan reminded him.

"We got played!" I shouted, throwing vicious glares at the skeletons before stopping. It wasn't their fault that they were murdered by a sick bastard who I only want to see once again – and that would be to taunt him and maybe go a little insane, like I did with Charlie Sanders's murderer. There was no "if" anymore. Epps wasn't going to be executed. He _played _us, like we were pawns in his chess game of life, and he _won…_

"What?" Brennan asked, her voice nearly breaking. "How?"

"Because either way, Epps wins." I imagine Booth is plenty angry; but he wasn't expressing it the way I was. I was showing it as rage, but he was keeping his cool. He was expressing his in distaste, and the anger at himself was directing itself into guilt at being conned, while with me, it was just adding fuel to the fire of fury. "If we find Ross, then the execution is stopped. If we find these bodies…"

Brennan's face fell as she understood. "The execution is stayed until these murders are investigated," she finished, disappointed.

Booth held his phone up, his fingers hovering over the screen contemplatively. He held it out slightly and looked down at Brennan and I. "If I don't make this call, he's going to be dead in less than half an hour."

_I can live with that. _He deserves to be dead for what he's done! We've been used; he cheated, so why shouldn't we? He gets out of death by us discovering more of the crime that put him up for death in the first place! How is that fair? I stared up at Booth, not saying anything, but he held my gaze, understanding what I was thinking even without communicating. _Do it, _I urged in a silent dare. _Go on. Put it away. Don't call it in._

"But these women, they deserve to be heard," Brennan said regretfully. I looked away from Booth. She looked like she wanted just as bad to agree with me, but her morality wouldn't allow her to overlook the possible truth; what she's dedicated her life to. I had to, however grudgingly, admire her for that. I know in my head that what I'd been voting for was wrong, wrong on so many levels, but on an emotional level, God, it was so unbelievably tempting.

I also know that I'm not in a great state of mind, though. I'm not going to fight her on something like this. I know better than anyone how much mental damage I have from abuse and horror. A survivor of severe child abuse and the attacks on the twin towers... I know I need a psychologist, but at this point, it was probably beyond help. So much for foster families taking care of me.

But I get through anyway, because that's what I am. A survivor.

"It's what we do, Booth," Brennan continued. "The rest…"

"Lawyers," Booth nodded reluctantly, surprising me. I hadn't realized he'd been as okay with the idea as I had been. Maybe we're more similar than I really realized.

Brennan nodded once. "Lawyers."

Booth gave a dark sigh and lifted his phone to his ear. After a moment, when his call was answered, he spoke. "Amy, it's Booth. I think we got you your stay of execution, but… you're not going to like it much."

* * *

><p>"Thank you," Epps said. His voice was light and relaxed. I feel like I'm being taunted… probably because I am. "All I can say is thank you," he repeated, leaning over the table in a pretend show of emotion. He looked up, pretending to seem innocent.<p>

"What's that, Howie?" Booth asked snidely. "Practicing to get jury sympathy?"

"I did not kill anyone," Epps said firmly, his eyes wide. He leaned back as much as his chains would let him, looking at Brennan and I, who sat across from him. The only reason I was sitting with him in the room was because otherwise I would either be pacing or attacking him. Booth was standing beside Brennan while Amy was to my other side. He made his dark, mocking eyes connect with Brennan's. "Thank you. I mean it."

"We found the tire iron," Brennan told him coldly. Her voice betrayed no emotion, but I daresay I'd seen enough of her behavior to recognize that Howard Epps unsettled her. _Can't blame her; he should get a national award for being so damn creepy. _"You'll be found guilty of these murders."

Epps took on a sneaky, conniving smirk and looked to Amy directly. Whatever façade he'd been presenting to the duped lawyer was gone, and now he was letting her see his true colors. "Well, I need a good lawyer," he said, giving her an evil look. "These murder investigations take a long time." He nodded slowly, knowingly. "Then there's the appeals. And, since I should have been dead half an hour ago, it's all gravy from now on."

Amy closed her eyes against a threat of tears. She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead, dismayed. If she was anything like me, then she probably felt self-loathing. The anger at Epps for conning me had turned into me feeling dirty for letting him play me so easily. I'd not even considered that he'd be a psychopath because he was good at mimicking emotion and he was supposedly a one-time murderer.. "We gave him everything he wanted," she whispered, horrified at herself.

"It's not your fault, Amy," I said deliberately, my eyes not leaving Epps's hunched form. I didn't want to look away; he's a freaking psychopath, what am I supposed to do, turn my back to him? He bludgeons young blonde women to death, and I don't mean to brag or anything, but I'm young, and in case no one noticed, I'm blonde now. Fuck me, I really chose a bad time to dye my hair. "You tried to help free an innocent man. Epps is at fault for playing you. He's a psychopath. By nature, he can't feel guilt, but he can anticipate every emotion you feel. He played on our compassion to trick us into finding his kill grounds."

"Oh, aren't you a smart one?" Epps asked slowly, turning his dark eyes back to me for a moment, during which I felt extremely insulted, before going back to torment the defense lawyer some more. "Who knows if there will even be a death penalty then? I mean, that's your dream, isn't it?" He lowered his voice very slightly. "We want the same things from life."

Amy brought her head into her hands, her shoulders starting to shake, and waved at the door of the death row cell. The guard on the other side opened it for her and she bolted off down the corridor. That poor woman. I can't help but sympathize with her; I was tricked by him into helping him, and I feel filthy, and I wasn't even instrumental in it.

Epps's dark, languid smile turned on Brennan. That creep! He makes me sick! Literally, my stomach is queasy from being in the same room with him. "And I owe you, too. I read your book. When I read you were working with Booth here, I knew you were just what I needed."

Brennan's look of dismay contorted into one of anger. She jerked suddenly, like she was kicking out under the table, and Epps's face was suddenly connected with the table surface. The chains on his hands… Brennan had kicked out to get them and then pulled her leg back, the chains coming with it. His face had been forced into a collision, and there was a soft crunch. That has to hurt. Well, you know what, so does beating people to death in the head, so, uh, he really kind of had it coming.

I leaned forward to crow over him as he was down. "Hey, Howie?" I started venomously, adopting Booth's condescending nickname for him. "I'm doing a research project on the chemicals involved in lethal injection. While you're being given the shot, will you please write down everything you experience? I think I'll get an A-plus."

Epps sat up slowly and I fought a grimace. His nose was most certainly broken. _That's my forensic anthropologist! _I cheered in my head. A small rivulet of blood was draining from Epps's broken nose and staining his skin, yet he still had an eerie smile as he fixed his eyes on me. Total psychopath. "To help such a pretty dumb blonde attempt to seem beyond her intelligence in a social circle that she doesn't even belong in…" he trailed off, looking me up and down. His hand slowly reached out for mine.

I met his gaze, unblinking, staring back dangerously. I didn't even reply to the comment. I know I don't belong with Booth and the Jeffersonian scientists. I don't need a psychopath to point that out for me. Besides, getting mad about being called a dumb blonde would be playing into his hands – which I refuse to do again. Instead, I challenged him with my eyes to touch me. _Go on. Try._

The moment his fingertips grazed the back of my hand, I snapped. I flipped my hand over and caught his hand in a vice grip, then stood, my chair flying behind me with the abruptness of my rise. In a fluid motion, I pulled up on his wrist and then twisted my hand back around so his hand was underneath mine, and brought his wrist down sharply on the edge of the table, as hard as I could. A sickening c_runch _echoed very softly in the cell and Epps groaned lowly, pulling his hand back to cradle to his chest. He didn't look up again.

I turned to Booth, panting with adrenaline. Sure, he could arrest me for assaulting an unarmed man, but it was so worth it. "You going to arrest me for assault?" I asked boldly.

Booth raised his hands up to his shoulders, shaking his head. "From what I saw, it was purely self-defense."

I hummed and moved to the door, waiting for Brennan and Booth to follow my lead. I'm not spending any more time in this room with this psycho than I have to. "Maybe I shouldn't carry a gun, after all," I said thoughtfully. If I'd had a gun, would I have shot at Epps? Would I have shot to kill? Almost definitely to the first, but I couldn't be sure about the second, and if I'm being honest, then not knowing my own limits frightened me a little.

Booth scoffed. "Hell, if you're going to shoot _him, _you can have mine!"

* * *

><p>I opened the mailbox on my current foster guardians' house, just as the dawning of light announced the beginning of Monday. I yawned to myself, glad that Booth had directed the FBI to fax another excuse to the bar, giving me today to sleep off my exhaustion from the past forty-eight hours. While right about now, Booth and Brennan would be getting to Wong Foos, I was looking to see if the government had arranged my testimony against Martin Davis's murder. They had invited me to go with them, but since money is getting sparser for me, I'd declined. I really hadn't thought that my moonlighting would go on this long, but, as I'm looking at the crisp white court summons in my hands, I'm beginning to think that maybe it was about to come to an end.<p> 


	23. The Girl in the Fridge, Part One

It was two days after the Howard Epps catastrophe, and with the excess use of my shampoo, the blonde hair dye was finally coming out. I'm sorry, I just can't do it anymore. The other day, I'd used the additional absence to sleep all day. I'd intended to sleep through the night, too, waking up to an alarm only once at around seven to get a bite to eat (salty crackers. I love salt) so I wasn't starving in the morning. But I ended up waking several hours before I needed to, due to a nightmare about the psychopathic criminal.

That day, I went to the bar and worked from eight in the morning to eleven at night before swinging by Andy's office and giving him notice of my indefinite absence from work. To prove that I had legitimate reason, I showed him the court summons, which had a signature and the judicial seal. In turn, he gave me a paycheck to see me through. Usually I'd have gotten my salary at the end of last week, marking the first of the month, but then I'd been moonlighting, and Amy had come by to pick me up before the shift ended. To make up for the delay, I had fifty extra dollars to cash in addition to my normal five hundred for working at the bar.

Yes, for a bar in the bad part of the city, that's not actually too bad for a month. But for me, it's not quite enough to live healthily and happily. Since the crime rate is so high and the flats are about one fifth of a star, the rent each month is only about one fifty, compared to some housing districts. But then around another hundred goes to utilities, and another hundred is put into my insurance in case I end up in a hospital sometime and Booth doesn't somehow convince Cullen that the FBI should pay for it. Of the remaining, fifty is put into my emergency savings and the other hundred goes into buying from the cheap convenience store a few blocks away. It's a system that works for me, but most kids shouldn't be worrying about all of their life expenses.

Now, today, I have on some denim jeans and trainers, as per usual, and for the court specifically I'm wearing a nice blouse. Not that they no, considering I'm wearing my characteristic sweatshirt over it. Hey, just because it's a court, doesn't mean you have to dress professionally. It's just an overall suggestion. The only thing you really have to do is speak the truth (or lies that cannot be proven to be false), take an oath that you may or may not actually intend to honor, defend yourself within reason, and avoid being picked up by the bailiffs. Today was just a preliminary hearing of the people testifying and swearing in, just to get people ready for the real trial, which goes down tomorrow. After this, I'm going to the FBI headquarters, apparently, if the note my state-appointed lawyer gave me is any indicator. It was from, you guessed it; Special Agent Seeley Booth. It didn't give any reason or explanation, just gave me the very basics of the date, his office, and an ASAP notice.

I hope he's got another reason than another consulting job. I'm not being paid and I'm becoming friends with them. The people at the Jeffersonian are starting to _mean _something to me, and I know that the more I let myself be around them, the more I'll hurt later when I don't get to see them again. Although I'm probably not strong enough to say "no" to another offer, I know it's unfair for me to keep going like this.

As the slow court introduction passed by, I watched every clock available. I've seen turtles go more quickly than the seconds, and each minute seemed to be coming reluctantly. Before I knew it, an hour had passed from when I'd come into the court, been positively identified, fingerprinted, sworn in, and then been given time to confer with my appointed lawyer. Although the lawyer had seemed haughty at first, she stopped being an idiot when she realized that I'm not ignorant to the laws and my own defense. While there was no way that I was going to be charged with firsthand murder, the trial was using my testimony to clear me of suspicion of accessory.

Finally, the preliminary court session was adjourned. I couldn't get out of there fast enough! The judge let me leave and as soon as I heard the words, I was out of there. Goodbye, bailiffs and gavels, hello achingly-familiar FBI building. I took a taxi to the headquarters and then ran up the stairs. Holding up my note from Booth, the security made me sign in as a visitor and then let me through, having seen me before. They refreshed my memory on what floor Booth's office was on and let me on my way.

I knocked on the door confidently. I've been here enough, and besides, if Booth tells me to come over, then I have every right to be here. The door opened almost immediately and the office was less organized than it had been when I came here with Amy Morton. My greeter, Booth, had his black coat only half-on, only one of his arms through the sleeve. I raised an eyebrow and made a show of looking around the room. "Office fraternization?" I teased with a slight smirk to show that I wasn't serious. "Damn. I never would have thought."

Booth gave me one of those barely-patient looks of fake amusement. "Remind me to laugh later. Did court go well?"

"You mean, "was court totally and absolutely boring and nothing of any interest at all happened?" Yes, yes, that's exactly how court went." I answered with a roll of my eyes. "I think my lawyer thinks I'm an idiot. Why am I here?"

"You walked through the doors," Booth replied with a sly grin.

I gave him an unamused expression and followed him as he started walking through the department, away from his office. "Remind me to laugh later," I retorted, tossing his own words back. "What was that note about? I couldn't think of anything good."

"It's very like you to think of everything bad, you know?" He told me dutifully while we came to a stop beside the elevators. He pressed the button to go down and it lit up.

"Yes, I do know. I am me, after all. Hey, wait, are you dodging around the question?"

He clicked his tongue and snapped his fingers at me as the elevator dinged, trying to interrupt us and say that the doors were about to open. "Ten out of ten!"

"Usually when people are caught stalling, they don't praise the other person," I told him with dry amusement.

Booth's behavior is a puzzle to me. Like, a large jigsaw puzzle, except some of the pieces are missing. This is probably because he has many different aspects to his personality, and I don't know everything. He was a sniper in the army, yet now he works for the homicide department of the federal bureau. He has a child and yet he barely talks about him – at least, not when I've been around him. He likes to be a no-nonsense tough guy, but he's sensitive to other people. He has a brother and he never talks about his family. I can't tell why he's nice to me; when we met, he tolerated me because of his job, but he went beyond making sure I was physically unhurt. I'm a rude and unruly child trying to do an adult's role, and he invites me to do that, when he likes to keep things in order. I feel like I'm missing something, and I can't quite decide what I think of him.

"I've got an early Easter present for you!" Booth announced with a big, charismatic smile as he stepped backwards into the elevator. Realizing that he'd probably want to continue the conversation, but that he also probably had to be somewhere, I stepped in after him, going to lean against the wall while he pressed the button for the ground floor.

"I don't really like surprises," I told him honestly. They're… well, a surprise.

"Holly, what kind of kid are you?" Booth complained, only half serious. "What kid doesn't like surprises and presents?"

"The Holly Kirkland type, apparently. Well, I have a feeling you're going to tell me about what it is, whether or not I'm excited."

Booth grinned again. "Of course. Well, there's a case file in the car for you to look over. The bar would be faxed excuses. The victim is Maggie Schilling. She was found in a sealed refrigerator, and the squints think she was in there for somewhere near a year. There was a lot of hydromorphone in her system, according to the lab's toxin results. Bones is meeting us at the parents' house."

I paused before I said anything. "You're taking me on another case," I stated, hoping that my voice didn't give away my excitement and apprehension. Like I'd predicted, I couldn't make my stupid mouth say the word "no."

"Bingo!" Booth didn't see my anxiety. That's what I get for being either a great actress or for being so excited and eager to work past cases. "And this time, you're on with the FBI, not just the Jeffersonian."

"Cullen agreed to it?" I asked, unable to help my surprise. The haughty director of the FBI had seemed to like my spunk when we met, but when I made things a bit difficult for him, he seemed to gain an instant dislike for me. I couldn't comprehend that he wanted to let me hang around the federal bureau.

"Well," Booth started with a slight wince as the elevator doors opened. He exited and I followed, feeling remarkably like a dog following its master. "He made me promise not to give you a gun." Figures. "But he's recognized that you've assisted several federal cases before. So now it's fine for you to be an FBI consultant… as long as you don't shoot an unarmed man again."

"May I remind you that he was trying to light Dr. Brennan and I on _fire_? I think that's a pretty damn good excuse for shooting him. And it wasn't even fatal!"

Booth held up his arms. "Hey, I never said anything! Cullen just doesn't want to admit that the kid he yelled at is a crime-solver in the making."

I looked down at the ground. Booth didn't seem to think it was weird, because I suppose it's not that unusual for going down a flight of stairs. We were passing the set of stairs leading to the sidewalk outside. The air whipped at my hair and I briefly considered tying it back before deciding that I'd be out of the wind soon enough. I could see Booth's SUV just parked a little way down the block. "I'm not a crime solver," I corrected him. "I'm a temporary consultant. I'm not getting paid, so I can't just turn that into my career."

Booth reached out like he was going to catch my arm and pull me up to beside him instead of trailing behind, but then he remembered that I don't like to be touched. I frowned. I don't feel like it's fair for him to have to watch his normal actions all of the time just because of me, when he's been so considerate of me.

While Booth went around the car to get in, I sighed, casting a reluctant glance back at the FBI building. What have I done? Either I did something wrong or I did several things very, very right in order to get myself in a position where the best scientists in the world and an FBI Special Agent keep inviting me to work with them. How did I get myself roped into this, again?

* * *

><p>Maggie Schilling's case had been in a file in the car that Booth let me go through. It held toxin scan results, reports, paperwork, basic information, photocopies of x-rays where bone damage had been evident, the works, with an additional page of Brennan's notes. Maggie had a thyroid condition which would have resulting in her bones being brittle, which could help to explain the fractures in her wrists. Brennan thought that she had been bound and that she'd fought back, which is an acceptable scenario.<p>

She'd had several drug issues and wealthy parents, which explained how she managed to afford so many of the street drugs. When her skeleton along with liquefied tissue and organs had been discovered in a sealed, rusting fridge, Booth had had it sent straight to the Jeffersonian, where they had already gone through the motions. Hodgins took particulates and insect activity to place time of death at somewhere around eleven months ago. Toxin specialists at the Jeffersonian had run tests and determined that, at the time of her death, Maggie had been pumped full of hydromorphone, more commonly known as hospital heroin. Although it had been a lethal amount, that wasn't necessarily the cause of death, although no one had found anything suggesting otherwise.

Brennan's car was parked outside of the Schillings' house already when Booth and I got there. They lived off on their own; not too far from the city, but at the same time without close neighbors. A large, multi-story house was painted with complementary colors of pale tans and light browns, with dark red and orange furniture along with a leather La-Z-Boy chair and a dark black shaggy rug. The light fixture in the drawing room was a crystal chandelier which I couldn't stop taking glances at. It's just so cool-looking.

Booth and I were drinking from narrow glasses of lemonade which had been offered by Maggie's mother, while Brennan was drinking from a bottle of _Ice Mountain_ water. These hosts were much more considerate than April Wright's parents had been. We were all seated, with Brennan and I on a leather orange sofa while Booth was comfortable in a velvet armchair. The Schillings were sitting close to each other on a loveseat across from us, with a rectangular glass coffee table in the middle.

"I know it sounds terrible, but I hoped that she had just run away." Mrs. Schillings looked heartbroken, but at least she wasn't denying what we'd told her. Her hair was tied up in a tight bun and she had a long silver necklace around her neck. "That way, I could believe she was still alive."

"She started turning against us in high school," Mr. Schillings explained. His voice was slightly croaky but he was masking his grief well. His wire-rimmed reading glasses were slightly cloudy, the only sign that he was tearing up. "Did a lot of drugs. We tried to help her, and we sent her to rehab, therapy…"

"Kids have a lot to contend with these days," Booth said calmingly.

"We didn't help her. Not really," Mrs. Schilling dabbed at her eyes with a soft white handkerchief. "We had nannies to raise her because we were so busy, and we sent her to shrinks when she had problems instead of talking to her."

"You shouldn't blame yourselves, Mr. and Mrs. Schilling," I said, in what I hope is a placating tone.

Brennan tipped her head and started to speak. I closed my eyes. I totally respect her, but sometimes when she says facts, she comes across as aloof. "Environment plays a huge role in development," she pointed out.

The room fell uncomfortably silent for a few seconds. If we were alone, I'd have leaned forward and hit my head on the coffee table.

Booth cleared his throat suddenly, and this seemed to break the tense quiet. Brennan spoke again and this time it wasn't to state a fact that could be taken the wrong way. "I'd like some pictures of Maggie so I can compare them with her remains. Pictures of her dancing would be most helpful… or swimming."

Mrs. Schilling reached out with shaky hands to a thick, black book down on the coffee table and opened it to several pictures of herself, her husband, and who I guess is Maggie. _It must be a scrapbook or a photo album._ "How do you know she danced and swam?"

Before Brennan could reply, I sent her a pleading look. Brenna paused for a moment and rethought her words before softly settling on, "Some things can't be erased from the body."

I settled backwards, happy with Brennan's tactful words. "I apologize for this, but we need to ask you about your daughter's drug issues," I said with the most professional air I could manage. "Do you know what she was using?"

Mr. Schilling looked down, not particularly thrilled about the question, but he gave a half-shrug. "Alcohol, ecstasy, marijuana."

"What about the drug hydromorphone?" I asked. If Maggie hadn't used hydromorphone before, then that may be a clue of finding her murderers. "It's a narcotic commonly referred to as hospital heroin."

Mrs. Schilling shook her head slowly. "It doesn't sound familiar."

"She had a thyroid condition," Brennan tried. "Was anything prescribed for that?"

Mr. Schilling was clearly disappointed in himself that he didn't know. "Her endocrinologist might know," he muttered.

Mrs. Schilling slowly pulled another photo from the album, this one of Maggie wearing a dance outfit with her hands carefully in front of her. Her legs were completely straight and her torso was bent, like she had been in the middle of a bow from the end of a recital. "We have to find who did this to Maggie. We have to do this for her."

Personally, I agree.

* * *

><p>Maggie's endocrinologist was pretty young. His dark hair and tall stature made him seem both professional and welcoming when coupled with the cream color of the office walls. He had a desk with a black and white lettered nameplate reading "Nicholas Barragan, M.D.". Several books were on his shelves and one lay open on his desk when he greeted our party of three and welcomed us inside while he explained to us about Maggie's prescriptions. "Maggie's condition didn't respond to medication. I was trying to get her to agree to surgery when she disappeared."<p>

"What types of medication are we talking about?" Brennan asked, her mouth moving while her eyes roamed the office.

Barragan thought for a minute, his eyebrows furrowing in concentration. Maggie last saw him almost a year ago, anyway, and he's bound to have more than one patient at any time. "Furosemide, pamidronate… I also tried various calcitonins," Barragan finally answered upon remembering.

"What about hydromorphone?" I questioned.

Barragan shook his head quickly. "There are no pain issues associated with hyperparathyroidism, but I knew Maggie had a drug problem. She was definitely interested in getting some opiates from me. She bribed my office manager for samples."

Booth raised his eyebrows, wearing his "a-ha we've got a lead" expression. "I'm going to need your office manager's home address."

"Ex-office manager," Barragan corrected. "She's going to be what you call a… disgruntled employee."

* * *

><p>The ex-office manager's name is Mary Costello. She and her husband Scott live in a small home but in a nice part of town. There's only two floors; ground and basement. They let us in willingly enough, and invited us to make ourselves at home. Brennan accepted a seat in a chair across from Mary and Scott's couch, but when I saw that Booth didn't feel like sitting, I didn't either. Mary and Scott seemed kind enough, but appearances are deceiving, and something was unsettling Booth.<p>

Mary has dark blue eyes and curly, natural blonde hair that fell a few inches past her shoulders, while Scott's hair was dark brown and kept short. There were a pair of men's reading glasses on the little stand by the couch. "I didn't give Maggie those samples," Mary said insistently but earnestly. "She boosted them herself. That man just blamed me so he'd have an excuse to fire me."

"Why did he fire you?" I asked sharply, before realizing that I was coming across as mean again. Booth and I were leaning against opposite sides of the frame of wall leading from the living room to the kitchen, where the marble countertop sparkled and the soft greys and light blues stood out from the solid, sleek black of their new fridge. Oh, hey, they have a new refrigerator. Good for them, it looks like one of the expensive ones.

… Wait a minute. They have a new refrigerator.

Maggie Schilling was found in a refrigerator.

_Oh._

"Because he's a horn dog," Mary answered my question with a little smirk. I crossed my arms deliberately. "I tried to keep things professional. You know what I mean?"

"Dr. Barragan said that you were closer to Maggie Schilling than any other patient," Brennan continued, while I looked over to Booth repeatedly, hoping that one of these times he would meet my eyes and I could subtly nod to the fridge.

Mary scoffed lightly. "Did you meet her parents?"

"Yes," Brennan answered truthfully.

Mary exhaled quickly and responded, "Then you know the poor girl was pretty much on her own. We took her in." Okay, I'll admit that that seems nice of them, but… you know, I'm still not too sure I trust them.

"He said that you went out together. That you took her to clubs," Brennan prodded further while I finally made eye contact with the special agent. I tipped my head toward the fridge. He looked at it for a few seconds before coming to the same realization I had and he beckoned me with him over to the front of it, leaving Brennan to lead the questioning.

"We just felt sorry for her, you know?" Scott said with wide eyes and a low shrug. "She was lonely so we showed her a good time."

I stood casually in front of the fridge while Booth leaned around to the side and looked behind it. When he backed out, Mary had picked up the conversation while I braced my heels into the carpet and tried to force myself backwards. The fridge slid slowly, but the important thing is that it was moving.

"One weekend, we took her on a road trip," Mary was saying.

"Yeah, the three of us ended up in Atlantic City. Totally crazy-" Scott interrupted.

Brennan frowned very slightly and readjusted herself, not seeming to notice that Booth and I were doing our best to push the fridge back closer to the wall without it being obvious. "Atlantic City doesn't seem an appropriate-"

"It's not like we planned it," Mary said at the same time. When I shoved as far back as I could and the fridge stopped giving in to me, I stepped to the side and looked down by the ground. There were rust-colors scrape marks on the tile floor of the kitchen, where an old refrigerator had been. The flaky trail was hard to miss. I looked up and Booth and I exchanged a look and he nodded. It's almost scary how we seem to think along the same tracks when it comes to discovering evidence and guilt. "Pills, vodka, and weed," Mary laughed.

"Mary wanted Maggie to go to meetings. You know, Alcoholics Anonymous, like that," Scott added, wrapping his arm around Mary's shoulders and pulling her closer to him.

"Really, that's very kind of you," I told them with absolutely no emotion in my voice, before bouncily changing the topic. "Now let's talk about your new refrigerator, yeah? It's always a great line of conversation."

Mary scoffed, but I detected the slight movement she made to adjust her position so she was facing me more. "Why?"

Booth shoved his fists into his pockets and looked from the scrapes on the tile to the Costellos. "Mainly, I'd like to know what happened to your old one."

"Always a lovely tale," I agreed, crossing my arms and leaning against the countertop by the sink. I smirked. "So what about it, Mary? What was wrong with the last one?" I waited a minute before adding, "Was it a bit too full of protein for your liking?" Mary's expression changed to nervousness and I grinned at her, grimly triumphant. If that wasn't a sign of guilt, I'm not sure what is.

* * *

><p>At first, the FBI had come in with a warrant and things had been sort of calm, aside from Mary's anxious tapping and Scott's wary glances around. But then they'd found a lot of <em>things <em>in the basement and their bedroom (you know… those types of things.) and they'd had to bring in evidence boxes. I directed an agent to the marks on the floor and while she took measurements and pictures to compare to the fridge Maggie had been found in, I was left to my own devices, no longer needed nor wanted around. I went back to stand with Brennan and Booth in the living room.

Booth nodded at his phone and closed it, ending his call. "The fridge we found Maggie in is a match with the marks on the Costellos' floor," he informed us.

I looked as the search party carried several evidence bags around. One of them had an entire, loosely-packed small cardboard moving box. I scowled and looked away from the chains I saw in one of the clear bags. "The Costellos are sadomasochistic fetishists," I stated, then gave Booth a sideways glance before explaining. "They enjoy inflicting and feeling pain in their bedrooms."

"Yeah," Booth said, shoving his hands in his pockets again. "I knew what that meant." Somehow I highly doubt that, although maybe it's just me. "They turned the basement into a fun room."

"Seeking sexual gratification through the manipulation of power," Brennan elaborated, reaching into the box that the search officer was carrying. He stopped so that he could get whatever she took when she was done with it. Brennan held up the collar with spikes and gave it a weird look, like she couldn't decide how she felt about it. She lowered it back into the box and the agent continued on his way. "Probably the oldest of fetishes; master-slave. It's all about dominance."

"Well, this only comes up when the bloom comes off the rose, if you know what I mean," Booth said uncomfortably.

"I don't know what you mean," Brennan predictably replied.

I swear Booth's face turned red. "You know, when the regular stuff –" he stopped and then tried to start again. "When it gets old, you need to spice it up, it's over. When sex is good, you don't need any help."

Brennan grinned. "That's for sure."

"Ew!" I shrieked, laughing at the same time. Booth and Brennan both smiled as I covered my ears. "Hey! Ew! I'm seventeen! For another eight months I'm a minor! Minors don't need to hear this! I don't need to hear this! Ever! Ew!" My birthday is in December. Technically, it's the twenty-seventh of the month, but I usually don't celebrate. Yay, I'm a year older, whatever. It was an inevitable achievement. If I ever am forced to participate in cake-and-ice cream celebrations by foster families, they make me celebrate a week or two early because of Christmas or Hanukkah.

"I was just saying that I myself feel no inclination toward either pain or dominance when it comes to sex," Brennan justified, although I could tell she was amused by my reaction.

This in mind, I dramatized it some more and kept my hands over my ears, squeaking like her words physically hurt me.

"Are you sure?" Booth asked her skeptically.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Brennan said, a little affronted by the insinuation that she wouldn't know her own preferences.

Booth whistled in disbelief. "Because you can be very bossy."

Brennan frowned and hit his arm lightly with a whip that the search team had put over the couch in an evidence bag. I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself, looking away from the whip. I don't think Booth noticed. I just can't stand looking at whips; not since one was used on me. Oh, it took forever for those marks to heal, and they're some of the most prominent scars on my back. Did I mention it hurt? A lot?

Booth looked down at the little collection of evidence bags and lifted up a pair of handcuffs with a pink fuzzy slip over them. Scott smirked very slightly from where he was being held back on the other side of the room. "Look at him, huh? Whoo! All smiley," Booth taunted, swinging the handcuffs as best as he could while they're in a plastic bag. "I bet he just loves these things."

Brennan snatched the handcuffs away from Booth, no longer paying attention to his antics. Through the bag, she worked to open one of the cuffs. "These could explain the stress fractures," she explained. "Maggie's bones were brittle from the disease. Struggling would cause the cracks we saw."

* * *

><p>"You okay, kid?" Was my greeting when Hodgins joined Zach and I on the exam platform.<p>

When Mary and Scott were arrested, Booth went back to the FBI to interrogate them and I rode with Brennan back to the Jeffersonian. With Zach and the security guards supervising me, I was working up on the platform while Brennan had gone to meet Booth and someone else at the entrance to the building. I was going over the skeleton and trying to find another link to the Costellos from Maggie Schilling's remains.

I didn't look up to Hodgins. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be? Is there a prank that I'm not aware of?"

Hodgins snorted. "Oh, if there was a prank, you would know about it. No, I meant after the Epps thing." I swallowed and continued my examination resolutely. There were small stress fractures on the bones in Maggie's wrists, like Brennan had said, and the marks on the bones suggested the ligaments and tendons hadn't been used much before they'd decomposed. Maggie had been tied up for more than a few minutes before she was killed. "I heard you broke him," Hodgins urged.

"Why would you do that?" Zach set down the left tibia and looked up at me curiously.

_Because he harassed someone I was willing to protect? Because he's ruined so many lives? Because he's a sick, twisted bastard who made me nauseous? Because I felt like he was zeroing in on me? _"Because he touched me," I said simply, still slightly tense. That was the answer I felt most comfortable giving; it's no secret that being touched doesn't sit well with me. Ladjavardi got flipped, a Venezuelan official got beaten unconscious, et cetera. I don't think anyone will be mad at me for breaking the wrist of a murderer.

"And you're really okay with what happened?" Hodgins urged. I wanted to lash out with sharp words, but I knew that, although it would get him to leave me alone, I'd feel guilty about it later. _He's just worried about the kid he has to supervise._

"No. I'm not okay, because several young women have been murdered, I played a psychopath's game and he won, and now he's not getting what he deserves. So I'm really not okay, but there's nothing anyone can do about it," I said shortly. I had a feeling that if I were a cartoon, steam would be coming out of my ears.

Hodgins looked at his clipboard for a moment before casually asking, "Are you planning on testifying as an expert witness?"

I raised my eyebrows. "I wasn't aware we would be involved in this case going to court."

Hodgins nodded, seeming proud of himself for knowing something I hadn't already figured out. "According to Brennan, Booth says the Costellos got a good lawyer and we have to testify to get them sent to jail."

I gave a half-shrug. "Then yeah, if I have to testify, I will. I'll be at the courthouse already, I might as well get another set of murderers in jail."

"Does anyone have a watch?"

I turned my head to look over the railing. Brennan was quickly approaching the platform, security pass in hand, with a man behind her. He looked a few years older than her, but there couldn't have been more than five to eight years of an age gap. He was admittedly handsome; tall, with short dark hair, and with the top button of his shirt undone. He had a black jacket over his shirt which let him pull it off without looking too unprofessional. He had been the person asking about a watch. Booth followed behind them.

After a cursory glance at both Zach and Hodgins's wrists, I shrugged at him with a polite half-smile. "Nope. Sorry. It was around one half an hour ago," I supplied. If he was with Brennan, he can't be that bad.

The man fixated his eyes on me for a couple of seconds before he murmured something to Brennan as she swiped her card and they stepped up. I didn't hear what he said, but I heard Brennan's response clearly. "She is seventeen, and yes, she has been extended multiple invitations to be here."

I cleared my throat and raised my eyebrows at the man. "With all due respect, I am also capable of coherent speech and comprehension, so if you have a question regarding me, you can ask me yourself."

Brennan stretched latex gloves over her hands and spoke quickly to Zach, like she was on a time restraint. "Pull up the frontal and lateral view of the victim's lower fibulas," she ordered. Then she glanced at the man and back to me. "Holly, this is Dr. Michael Styres."

"Holly Kirkland," I said courteously back to Michael, who gave a sheepish half-wave.

"You trained her well, Doc," Booth said friendlily to Michael, settling against the railing and getting comfortable.

"She's brilliant," Michael agreed, before lowering his voice so Brennan couldn't hear. "A little cocky, though."

Booth chuckled heartily. "Yeah. Tell me about it." While Zach showed Brennan an image of an x-ray on the computer monitor, Booth nodded at Brennan's back. "She's a pretty good partner, though. What you see is what you get. That's a rare quality. That's just between us, isn't it?" He asked quickly for confirmation, looking between Brennan and Michael, suddenly nervous.

"Dr. Brennan found marks on the medial malleoli, both left and right." Zach turned around to report to Michael and I.

"Legs were bound," I translated automatically for Booth. It's becoming a habit.

"Mirror erosion patterns are from the bones rubbing together over time," Zach added helpfully, hovering his hand over the large pictures of the x-rays in question.

Booth snickered. "If this were the result of sex games, then the legs, they wouldn't be bound together," he reasoned. I closed my eyes and faced the ground. "Well, come on! If you're looking for a little nookie, the last thing you'd tie together are the legs."

I pretended not to feel the heat in my cheeks. "I really hope you don't plan on including that in a professional court testimony."

Michael evenly studied the x-rays for a moment before he shrugged noncommittally and, looking Brennan straight into her eyes, said smoothly, "I'm not convinced. Brittle bones from her thyroid condition – the damage could have happened in a very short time."

Brennan swallowed, tensing, and then stalked over to the table, pointing at the joint of Maggie's elbow. "We also found evidence of inflammation on her right humorous and ilium."

"The bone abnormalities indicated pathosis from lying in one position for a long time," Zach elaborated, moving again to stand by Brennan's side.

"Long-term bondage is a reasonable explanation," I nodded. Although not absolutely, one hundred percent certain, it was the best explanation we had, and the facts backed it up.

Michael heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Decreased bone density could have caused the inflammation. This isn't definitive." He arrogantly smirked at Brennan and my dislike for him rose up another notch. I'd thought this was friendly competition; but this just seemed rude. Booth seemed equally annoyed. "I hear there's a nice little French place near here I'd like to try."

Brennan scowled and started snapping off her gloves. "I still have five minutes," she insisted stubbornly.


	24. The Girl in the Fridge, Part Two

** "****My department's still working with polaroids," Michael stated enviously, crossing his arms and soaking in the total awesomeness of Angela's holographic projector. The basic image of a feminine frame on her side impressed him into making comparisons. Well, the Jeffersonian isn't the best in the world for nothing, although I have to empathize with his awe. I still sometimes can't believe I've been in here with these people.**

** "****Cool, isn't it?" I asked with a grin.**

** "****So what do you think?" Brennan asked Michael smugly, knowing just as well as I did that this technology far outdid whatever he had.**

** "****Very impressive," Michael admitted. "Especially to the nonprofessional," he added, glancing subtly over at me. My smile fell instantly. Who the hell does he think he is? I don't care if he has a doctorate, he has no right to come in here and insult me! Although I know that I don't really have a place in the Jeffersonian, I was invited here by Brennan, so I deserve the professional courtesy that Michael shows the others!**

**Angela smirked down at her handheld tablet. "You want science? Give me the estimated time of captivity." I wondered briefly why Angela wasn't smirking at Michael (she seems to like outdoing men), but brushed the thought away. Michael probably has a girlfriend, and Angela's the type of person who, although loves to flirt, would respect that.**

** "****Approximately three weeks," Brennan told Angela. Angela entered the time into the tablet, and the holograph adjusted accordingly. The flesh faded to translucency and parts of the skeleton where there had been the most wear were highlighted with a bright yellow.**

** "****Okay, so these are the affected areas," I announced, getting to business quickly. To be honest, I wouldn't mind showing Michael that I'm not stunned into stupidity by the great technology. "During the advanced time simulation, the bones begin to deteriorate." Thankfully, Angela took the cue I had no authority to give, and the projector zoomed in around the skeleton's hips, ribcage, and lower arms and wrists while the bones began to degrade.**

** "****You're winning, right?" Booth muttered to Brennan. I just barely heard him.**

**Winning? Was there a bet? ****_I still have five minutes. _****Oh… she must have made something into a competition with Michael. I looked over at the other anthropologist to see if I was right, and indeed, he didn't look very thrilled with the way things were going.**

** "****Can I see your findings?" He said with a plastered smile that I could see through. He was trying to get through this with as much dignity as he could possibly save. Brennan passed over her clipboard and Michael lifted up the top paper, scanning quickly over Brennan's neat and organized notes while Angela powered down the projector. With a disturbed expression, Michael looked up and let the papers settle back into place before looking at Brennan with see-through humility. "This appears to be indisputable."**

** "****The narcotic found in her system was not the result of recreational drug abuse," Brennan concluded, sounding both triumphant and saddened at the same time. Although happy she had won her bet, she probably wished for it to be under different circumstances. No one wants to win a bet because they proved someone else was in intense pain.**

**Angela sighed and held her tablet close to her chest. "The inflammation would have been very painful, and the pain would have only increased over time."**

** "****They kept upping the dosage of hydromorphone until they gave her too much, and she died," Brennan closed her eyes and shook her head in disgust for a moment. "Those people bound and killed that girl."**

**Michael sighed, casting his eyes downward before looking to Brennan peacefully. "I yield. French restaurant?"**

**Brennan's lips twisted into a satisfied smirk. Moments like this are when I gain more of a sense of adoration for her as herself, not just as my favorite authoress. "I'm more in the mood for Italian," she disagreed smugly. "I need to put together the evidence packet for Booth to deliver to the U.S. attorney."**

**Michael nodded to her submissively. "I'll meet you at your place."**

**The senior anthropologist returned Brennan's papers to her waiting hand. With a last, courteous nod, he walked out of Angela's office. He was clearly unhappy about this. My eyes followed him until he was completely out of sight. Bad sportsmanship. I'm not really sure I like that he and Brennan are going out to a restaurant – and probably sleeping together, if their behavior is anything to go by. Of course, that's just me nosing into what isn't my business. I don't have a right to be protective of Brennan and I certainly have no right to know who she's sharing her bed with.**

**Brennan smiled to herself and Booth held out his fist for a fist-bump. "Good work!" He complimented. Brennan looked from his fist to his face and blinked before her expression changed to a 'you must be joking' one. Something tells me he's not going to get his fist-bump any time soon.**

* * *

><p><strong>The next day I was back in the courthouse. This time I was being prepared for the Costellos' trial. I must admit, it's quite satisfying to be introduced to the judge as an expert witness by the attorney.<strong>

**I had to answer some basic questions; how I learned what I knew and how I attained my knowledge on forensics and law. The judge seemed willing to accept that it had been a hobby, which is good, because I didn't have a clever lie planned. When I was dismissed at lunchtime, I went to the lobby to collect my messenger bag to leave. Unfortunately, I was met with a familiar but unwelcome face.**

** "****Dr. Styres?"**

**Michael responded to his name and turned around from talking with who I half-recognized as the Costellos' defense lawyer. He seemed surprised to see me. "Miss Kirkland," he greeted curtly. "Might I ask what you're doing in the courthouse?"**

**I raised my eyebrows. Why was he talking with the defense lawyer? It was common knowledge that you don't exchange pleasantries with people on opposite sides of a court case until after the sentencing. You just… don't. "You may ask all you like, but I'll only answer if you tell me why you're here," I said smoothly.**

**_Don't jump to conclusions, Holly._**

**Michael sighed and shoved his fists in his black jacket pockets. "I'm not inclined to share my whereabouts with a child."**

**_Okay. That's it. Done playing nice. _****I cleared my throat and gave him my best 'civil-expression-with-an-underlying-threat' face. Bad cop it is, then. "Well, then I guess it's just too bad that I have no reasons not to tell Dr. Brennan that you were here, talking to Mr. and Mrs. Costello's defense lawyer." I smiled slightly, quirking my eyebrows.**

**Michael took several steps closer to me and tried to make himself seem taller than he actually was. "Are you blackmailing me?"**

** "****Well, I'm threatening you into telling me what I want to know by means of hanging over your head that I'll tell Dr. Brennan that you were here if you don't, so, yes, I'm pretty sure that counts as blackmail." I smiled up at him sweetly. "Although, remember, you can't hold me at fault for that. After all, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just a ****_child._****"**

** "****If I may interrupt," the defense lawyer began to interfere, stepping in between Michael and I. His nametag read Meredith. I'm not sure whether or not that's his last name, but I'll roll with it. "Dr. Styres is our forensic anthropologist. He is our expert witness."**

**My mouth opened slightly and I looked back to Michael, my jaw setting itself tightly in my anger. Now it makes sense that he was so upset about Brennan being right yesterday. He was manipulating her into telling him her entire case, just so that he can tear down her entire case. Unlike yesterday, I couldn't just walk it off as none of my business. Whether or not she considers me a friend, I'm inclined to protect Brennan, and Michael was using her and betraying her.**

**I blinked once before throwing a swing at Michael. My fist connected with his jaw and his head snapped to the side. He cursed and Meredith gaped in shock. "You manipulative bastard!" I hissed, ignoring the lawyer. "I can't believe you're using her to meet your own ends!"**

**I stormed away, shaking my head angrily. I need to get away before security realizes I hit him. I need to tell Brennan, even though I really don't want to be the bearer of bad news.**

* * *

><p><strong>Brennan and Angela were up in the loft, conversing quietly when I found them. I was a little hesitant to intrude on their conversation; since I was testifying on the Jeffersonian's behalf, I do have a right to be here until the end of this case, but I didn't want to be on the receiving end of things if Brennan lashed out when I delivered the bad news.<strong>

** "****Dr. Brennan?" I asked softly. My fingers clutched the straps of my messenger bag nervously and my knuckles were turning white. "May I interrupt for a moment?"**

**Angela and Brennan both seemed surprised, but not upset. "Of course, sweetie," Angela assured me quickly.**

**I slid my teeth over my bottom lip before speaking in a pointless effort at reigning in tension. "Well, firstly, the judge is holding the Costellos without bail. I think the U.S. attorney might send you a flower basket, Dr. Brennan."**

** "****The facts are facts," Brennan replied modestly, giving me a half-shrug.**

** "****And, uh…" I paused. ****_Come on, Kirkland! You can take being interrogated as a murder suspect, but you get scared of telling someone about something that's not even your fault?! Where's that courage?! _****The mental taunt worked. I took a deep breath and then came out with it. "Dr. Brennan, I'm sorry, but I do have a legitimate reason for asking. How much of the case have you been sharing with Dr. Styres?"**

**Brennan seemed mildly surprised, but she answered anyway. "Oh, I bounce everything off of him," she said nonchalantly. "Why?" She looked up at me from the couch curiously.**

**_Get it over with already! _****"****Um… you have to keep him out of the case from now on," I said quickly.**

** "****Out of it?" Brennan repeated, blinking in confusion. "Why?"**

** "****I was at the courthouse today…" I said, trying to explain before she got angry. "And while I was there, I stayed to be authorized as an expert witness on the Maggie Schilling case. When I was leaving I saw Dr. Styres talking with the Costellos' lawyer. Dr. Styres… he's their expert witness." Brennan seemed completely shocked. She wasn't even denying it, but she was giving me this look like she couldn't believe I would say something so mean. "It is his job to tear down the case that you've built."**

**I looked down, worrying on my lip again with my teeth. I heard Angela sigh softly, but what worried me was that Brennan wasn't saying anything. I looked up again and hesitantly added, "And I'm sorry I punched your boyfriend in the face."**

* * *

><p><strong>I was happy to find that, when Michael had come back to the Jeffersonian to have his court-allotted time to make observations of Maggie Schilling's skeleton, he already had the beginnings of a dark bruise on the side of his face.<strong>

**While Michael was busy analyzing the bones, everyone – and I do mean everyone – watched his every movement carefully. Zach wasn't even blinking and Hodgins looked like a hawk focused on its prey. Of course, the conspiracy nut that he is, Hodgins had convinced Zach to videotape Michael's time with the bones. Booth was bored, but he was keeping an eye on the professor. Angela had one of her sketchpads in her hands and was pressing it against her stomach while she watched, bored, but dedicated to helping her friend. Brennan looked surprisingly at ease with the situation; I assume she and Michael talked for a while right after he got here and while I was busy filling in Booth on why Michael may look like someone attacked him. Despite the apparent consensus they had come to, Brennan was still closely monitoring Michael's actions. Dr. Goodman looked like he had a plank tied to his back, his spine was so straight. He was carefully watching what Michael did while I stood between him and Booth, my arms crossed and my eyes going between Michael's clipboard (which made me angry) and the bruise on his face (which calmed me again).**

** "****Keep an eye on him," Booth whispered to Goodman and I. Although he didn't want Michael to hear, he wasn't quiet enough for the squints not to.**

** "****That will not be a problem," I promised, shifting my weight to my other leg. I didn't even look up when Goodman looked down at me in surprise, having not expected to have an echo when he'd said the exact same thing.**

** "****Could you please not do that again?" Booth asked, frowning between the archaeologist and I. "It's weird." I rolled my eyes.**

**Goodman nodded very slightly to Hodgins and Zach. Hodgins made the "O.K." sign with his hand and Zach, without looking away from the camcorder's view screen, nodded slowly back. I'm beginning to wonder if this lab will ever be normal. Probably not. Booth's attempts at hindering abnormality are in vain.**

**Booth leaned around Goodman and made a thumbs-up sign at Hodgins and Zach. Zach looked away from the camera for a minute and he returned the gesture. Hodgins clapped Zach's shoulder, congratulating him on making a correct social gesture.**

**Angela raised her eyebrows and scoffed. "Did you just give Zach and Hodgins a sign of encouragement?" I blinked and shook my head slowly. Is the world coming to an end?!**

**Booth gave a half-smile. "Yeah. You know, that's the first time I've been able to look at them without imagining Moe-" he mimicked hitting two things together. "Knocking their heads together."**

**I rolled my eyes again, but this time I was amused. Poor Hodgins and Zach. I don't think they'll ever get a break. Goodman smiled very slightly as he cautioned, "Agent Booth, you're accessing your inner squint." Even funnier was that Booth actually looked mildly frightened. He raked his hand through his hair and looked down at his coat like he was making sure it hadn't been swapped for a lab coat.**

**Michael looked up from the exam table and tilted his head, looking directly at Brennan. "Tempe, you listed an avulsion fracture on the right femur. It looks minor. Do you consider this evidence?"**

**I tensed, but before I gained the urge to create a new bruise on the professor, Booth answered. He made a 'hold on' cue to me with one hand while he coolly told Michael, "Dr. Brennan's conclusions belong to the prosecution."**

**Michael snorted softly to himself, giving Booth this charismatic smile. I could tell with one glance that Booth wasn't impressed. "I have no interest in destroying your case, Agent Booth."**

** "****So, you're ****_not _****testifying as expert witness against the Jeffersonian?" I asked, feigning shock. "Because, see, that's exactly what the defense does."**

** "****I'm just trying to get a sense of-" Michael started again.**

**Goodman interrupted him with a light patronizing tone. "Of her interpretations of data, to which you are not privy, Dr. Styres." I'm liking Goodman more and more, although to be fair, I really don't like Michael.**

**Brennan shot the three of her defenders a look. I had the respect to pretend to be meek. She didn't seem angry, but she wasn't amused. "I understand the game the doctor is trying to play, and I'm perfectly capable of dealing with him myself." She looked back to Michael, smug and self-confident. "I'm sure he's just thrown by findings he would have missed."**

**Booth started to laugh, but covered it with a cough and covered his mouth to hide a smile. I smirked. "Dr. Styres, there's a medical station back in the laboratory if you'd like to take care of that burn."**

**Michael held up his hands, waving his clipboard above his head. "Okay, I get it," he chuckled slightly, like our hostility was just a joke. "I'm on my own. Although, in the interest of fairness, I am willing to share my thoughts with you." He handed Brennan her clipboard back with the aura of a teacher. "I red-penciled a few things."**

**Brennan looked at the clipboard and I guess she saw his corrections. Quickly, she looked up at him, offended. "You corrected my findings?" She asked, her voice pitching higher, the way it does when she's stunned in a bad way.**

**Michael gave her the same sort of smile that she'd given him. "Consider it an opposing opinion."**

**Brennan was certainly not happy with this. "My findings are based on facts, Michael, not opinions," she objected sharply.**

**I looked down at the floor. Uh-oh. Michael might find himself sleeping alone tonight if he doesn't tread carefully. As I stared at the white linoleum, I briefly wondered what the likelihood was of disappearing into the ground until the tension was resolved, and didn't like the probability (or lack thereof) of that happening.**

** "****You seem to have finished your allotted time with the remains, Dr. Styres. I'd like my people to get back to work." Ah, much better. Leave it to Dr. Goodman to resolve the issue before there really is one. I looked up again, glad that a possible bomb had been deactivated.**

**Michael smiled at Goodman. "Thank you," he said. Then he turned his smile to Brennan. She tried to smile back, but her frustration was very clearly displayed on her face.**

* * *

><p><strong>Brennan and I stayed on the opposite end of Booth's office from the Jeffersonian's court support team. U.S. attorney Levitt, who would be working against the defendants during cross-examinations and witness questioning, was accompanied by a jury consultant. I have nothing against jury consultants, honestly, but this one just looks mean, with her flat-ironed dark hair and her unblinking brown eyes. She seemed like the type of woman who no one wanted to get angered at them, because she is constantly PMS-ing.<strong>

**Booth stood in the middle of the office and slightly to the side, like he was trying to be a peaceful mediator between parties that he knew would clash. "U.S. attorney Levitt and jury consultant Joy Deaver, this is Dr. Temperance Brennan and Miss Holly Kirkland. Both will be testifying as expert witnesses in our case."**

** "****Nice to meet you," Levitt greeted professionally but not unkindly. He stepped forward to shake Brennan's hand with a firm but non-threatening grip. He dipped his head to me in respectful acknowledgment. ****_Okay, dude. I guess you're cool. _****"****I looked over your findings, and I think we're in good shape."**

**Brennan smiled, pleased at the recognition of her intelligence. "Thank you. I-"**

** "****Juries don't like you," the jury consultant interrupted Brennan rudely.**

** "****Excuse me?" Brennan understood her perfectly, of course, but she seemed startled by the cold disregard the woman held for her. ****_Aw, and just when I started thinking we could all be friends._**

**Deaver's sharp eyes were locked on Brennan and I was reminded of an eagle by the lack of blinking and the cutting focus. I mean, she'd be quite pretty, if she learned to blink once in a while. I'm not asking for much. "I've seen you testify before, Dr. Brennan. You come off as cold and aloof. I want to make sure-"**

** "****Cold and aloof?" Brennan repeated, bewildered and offended.**

** "****Try not interrupting," Deaver advised, speaking over Brennan's much softer sounds of protest. "It makes you sound arrogant."**

**I couldn't keep my mouth shut and just watch her go after Brennan. "Oh, this is hypocrisy at its finest," I sneered, glaring at the consultant.**

** "****You need to stop looking so confrontational," Deaver told me. Oh, lovely. Apparently she has a few pointers for me, as well. ****_Come at me, then! _****"****You're a child and you've got no qualifications. I'm quite frankly astounded you're being allowed on the stand. Juries will not want to listen to a standoffish and disrespectful minor."**

**Booth flinched back and I swear he looked as though a nightmare was coming to reality in front of him. "This ****_really_****is ****_not _****the best approach," he told Deaver, begging with his eyes for her to listen to him.**

** "****Why are you so rude?" I demanded of the consultant. "I'm seventeen years old and I am capable of understanding implications of scientific evidence! I am only disrespectful to people whose decisions lose my respect, such as you!"**

** "****See?" The consultant looked at me with contempt. "Right now, you're acting like a brat."**

** "****Yeah? Well, you're acting like a bitch, so I'd say we're about even!"**

**Booth pinched the bridge of his nose and I'm pretty sure I heard him mumble a Catholic prayer.**

** "****I am a technical witness," Brennan stated firmly. "I have testified in over thirty trials!"**

** "****Yes," Deaver nodded but her expression of pity was insulting. "But most of the experts you've come up against are as dry and boring as you are. Now, I don't know if you've seen their expert-"**

** "****She's seen him, Miss Deaver," Booth assured her, his voice strained and tired.**

**Deaver's expression turned to a dreamy smile. Booth and I exchanged a disturbed glance. "Well, then you understand my concern. Professor Styres is open… charming…" she sighed. "Great looking. The jury's going to love him. ****_I _****love him."**

**I shrugged, rolling my eyes carelessly. "Well, as superficial as you are, I'm not surprised."**

**Deaver looked over me and to Booth. She pointed at me contemptuously. "See, you need to keep her under control. That temper of hers is not a turn-on to anyone in the jury."**

** "****Well maybe I can use my temper to persuade the ****_murderers _****into confessing to drugging and killing Maggie Schilling," I hissed. "After all, sadomasochists ****_like_****that sort of persuasion."**

** "****This isn't a personality contest!" Brennan exclaimed, defending herself against the very dislikable jury consultant. "It's about data that we present to the jury!"**

**Deaver gave her a look of deadpan disbelief. "You're kidding, right?"**

** "****No," Brennan answered indignantly.**

** "****The women on the jury aren't going to be listening to a word that comes out of his mouth," Deaver insisted sassily. "They're going to be undressing him. I don't want the men on the jury to be putting ****_more_****clothes on the two of you."**

** "****Well, I certainly don't want men ****_undressing _****me in their minds!" I retorted, shivering slightly at the thought. ****_Ew. Can someone say 'creepy and disturbing?' And while they're talking, someone tell this crazy woman to get her priorities straight!_**

** "****Wear something blue," Deaver ordered, ignoring me. As soon as the words passed her lips, I began planning out my assembly tomorrow. ****_No blue jeans. No blue shirts. No blue sweaters. Hell, no blue socks. _****"****It suggests truth. Make eye contact with the jury. Lose the baggy sweatshirt," Deaver turned from me to Brennan. "And lose the clunky necklace."**

** "****I'll lose the sweatshirt as soon as you lose the incompetence," I snarled.**

** "****Mary and Scott Costello murdered Maggie Schilling. The forensics data I've compiled ****_proves_****that, and that should be enough!" Brennan stressed to Deaver.**

** "****But it isn't enough," Deaver argued.**

** "****Okay, that's – that's great," Booth interrupted, hurrying to open the door and gesturing for Levitt and Deaver to take their leave. "We'll take that under consideration. Thanks." Deaver sent a parting, warning look at me before stalking out of the office, her hair swishing on her back. Levitt followed behind more slowly, offering Brennan and I each an apologetic expression. Once they were out, Booth closed the door to the office again.**

** "****Why didn't she say anything about you?" Brennan asked Booth almost immediately, sounding hurt. Well, I can't blame her. "You can be very irritating sometimes!"**

** "****You heard her, Dr. Brennan. Her kind of people don't see personalities; they see appearance. She was probably too busy undressing him with her eyes to critique him," I said with a roll of my eyes, already starting to shake off the encounter.**

** "****Bones, Holly, she's an expert," Booth said, his voice pleading. "She has an obvious personality disorder, but she wants to help. Just try?" He asked.**

**Brennan sighed, looking forlornly at the floor. "Okay, sure," she reluctantly agreed.**

** "****Good," Booth relaxed slightly, relieved.**

** "****I can do it," Brennan said to herself, confident. I smiled softly at her. ****_I know you can._**


	25. The Girl in the Fridge, Part Three

Court had started out intimidating, but knowing that Brennan, Booth, Hodgins, and Angela would all be there made it slightly easier to walk in. Unfortunately for me, my literal-minded friend (Zach) wouldn't be joining us in making testimonies, since he's an intern and not an employee of the Jeffersonian. Still, I'd thought I was okay.

Then everyone else filed into the courtroom. At one panel was the Jeffersonian, and across the aisle were those on the Costellos' side of the case. In the boxed seating was a collection of twenty to thirty jurors, several of whom seemed almost as nervous as I was. The judge was sitting up there with the gavel, and the stand by the side of the pedestal for witness questioning and cross-examination suddenly seemed a bit too close to the judge.

Up front on our side of the aisle was Brennan and Booth, predictably. As the representatives of their sources of testimony, Brennan representing the Jeffersonian and Booth representing the FBI, they were cool and collected up in front. Hodgins and Angela were on either side of me in the second row, which most certainly wasn't assisting with my nerves. I mean, if I need to run in a hurry (I'm not sure why I would need to, but I'm sure there's a possibility), I'd have to clumsily shove past someone. At the table behind mine (which marked the end of the prosecution), Maggie Schilling's parents were trying to keep their composure in the federal court, with Zach sitting to the side of the table, unsure how to talk to them. What, you didn't really think that Hodgins would let Zach stay out of the drama, did you?

On the defendants' side, Mary and Scott Costello were sitting with Meredith, their lawyer. While Mary was confrontationally holding staring contests with everyone she could, Scott was talking in low, hushed tones with Meredith, like they were solidifying their story. Behind them, Michael Styres had his own table. While the judge introduced the case, several things happened. For one, Michael sent Brennan and winning smile, which she hesitantly returned. Mary locked eyes with me and smirked, looking back up to the judge in front. And my stomach began to knot up again.

The prosecution opened the argument, which, if you think about it, makes a lot of sense. I mean, what are the defendants defending themselves against if they haven't been accused yet?

"_We will show that Mary Costello lured Maggie Schilling into her home with the promise of drugs."_

After the summary of the accusation, Meredith took up his own clients' case. To his credit, he had a presence in the court room, probably due to his obvious confidence.

"_She was not held against her will. She was, in fact, orchestrating the plot to extort money from her own parents, from whom she was estranged."_

"_They bound her for weeks, the pain growing. And to keep her quiet, the pumped her full of drugs."_

"_Her death was the result of a self-administered overdose."_

"_After killing their captive and ruining their chances of collecting a ransom, the Costellos stuff Miss Schilling's body into the refrigerator."_

When this was said, I heard a choked cry from behind me. Twisting in my seat, I offered Maggie's mother a consolatory smile. Of course, I couldn't talk in court without reprimand unless I was testifying, but even if it was allowed, I don't know what I would have said. _I'm sorry, this must be so hard for you? Don't worry, we have forensics backing us up, so keep enthusiastic?_

"_Knowing they could be accused of kidnapping and murder, my clients panicked and disposed of her body." Insert people-pleasing, meek shrug and a slight raise of the hands here. "While their behavior might be ill-advised, they are neither kidnappers, nor murderers."_

By the time Meredith and Levitt were done knocking the proverbial verbal tennis ball between the courts, court had been in session for almost an hour already. As Booth was called up to the stand, indicating the beginning of the expert testimonies, my intestines began to knot up again. Not a good feeling.

I spared a look at the jury, trying to gauge their reaction to the socially-apt FBI agent on the stand. Unfortunately, Deaver had been right. I got the distinct impression that at least two women weren't really listening to what he was saying, because they looked a bit like they were in la la land. I shook my head, annoyed, and looked back to Booth.

What? I might need to know what he says during my own cross-examination!

"Pharmaceutical samples of hydromorphone were found in the Costellos' belongings." Booth spoke with an admirable calmness, although he's probably testified several times before. He seemed totally comfortable up on the stand, going so far as to sit at an angle and lean against the side of the judge's podium with his forearm resting on the stand in front of him. "The lot numbers match those that were in Dr. Barragan's office."

I looked over at Mary again. She had her eyes trained on Booth although she didn't seem concerned.

"When I went to the Costellos' kitchen, my former ward pointed out to me the marks from the old refrigerator on the floor." I felt eyes on the back of my neck for a moment, but didn't turn around, instead wondering slightly on his choice of words. _Former ward? _I suppose it's the best way to describe our relationship clinically. I'm not his colleague, coworker, or even intern. If it hadn't been for my work for the FBI while I was his ward, I wouldn't be allowed to be working cases now.

Booth looked down at the podium front and got deeply into the character of an emotionally-shaken, honest man. "It was like… these marks, they screamed at me, "These people… they did it.""

Meredith raised his hand. "Objection!"

"Sustained," the judge ruled. "Just the facts, Agent Booth," she reminded. I like this female judge much more than I liked the one in charge of Epps's death row sentence.

"I'm sorry," Booth said, although he really didn't look very apologetic. "It's just that the receipt for the new refrigerator was dated two days after the negotiations broke off with the kidnappers." Booth shrugged slightly. "I mean, you figure it out."

Meredith started to rise to his feet, probably to make another objection.

"I know," Booth sighed before the lawyer could. "I'm sorry."

* * *

><p>I looked up at the judge to the side of me, waiting to be questioned by Meredith in the most patient way I possibly could. My throat felt slightly dry, but I passed it off as nerves.<p>

The way Meredith paced from side to side in front of me was quickly becoming annoying. "Is there any evidence that Maggie Schilling wasn't a willing participant in sexual activity involving those cuffs and other paraphernalia?"

"Well," I started off slowly. "I know that some people think dominance and submissiveness is entertaining, but usually people don't struggle hard enough to cause _bone damage _if the reason they're tied up is for recreational purposes. Also, ending up in the fridge sort of tells me that she probably wasn't too interested," I added as a second thought, cocking my head at the lawyer and nodding in emphasis.

The jury laughed at what I'd said, although I really hadn't meant to be amusing.

"Your honor?" Meredith implored, looking up to the judge.

I sighed, rolling my eyes. "No direct evidence," I called, giving Meredith a dirty look. You say one thing that doesn't sound empirical and he goes whining to the woman in charge.

"Is there any evidence that my clients forced Miss Schilling to take that narcotic?" Meredith asked.

The tense bubble in my stomach was unclenching the longer I was up here. It didn't seem to be nearly as bad as I'd anticipated, mostly because the questions were pretty simple and no one really wants to stare at a seventeen year old testifying in a federal homicide case.

I locked eyes with Brennan and replied to the question steadily. "I will defer the judgment of those answers to those more qualified to comment." Booth gave me a subtle thumbs-up sign.

* * *

><p>Hodgins' testimony was short and to the point. "Sciarids, also known as dark-winged fungus knats, went through several life cycles," he explained, enthused by his own love for entomology. "Also present were acaridae and anoetidae, but the most interesting find was not a bug at all, but was common bread mold." Hodgins took a minute to grin before he realized that next to no one understood completely. "All this data led to the same conclusion: Maggie Schilling was in that refrigerator between ten and twelve months."<p>

* * *

><p>"Even though we already had medical records and dental records from which to identify Maggie Schilling, I was also asked to do a sketch based on the architecture of her skull." Angela paused for a moment before saying, "That's sort of what I do." I smiled very faintly. The mild crisis Angela had gone through when Charlie Sanders had been killed had been resolved by Goodman before it had become a larger problem, but it was still good to see that she recognized that her job wasn't inhumane.<p>

Angela looked down to the large sketchbook in her hands. It was big enough to clearly see, given your vision was okay and you had glasses or contacts if needed. While not awkward to carry around, it was the largest sketchpad I'd ever seen. She turned it around, holding it up to the side for the jury's benefit. "It turned out pretty accurate, if I do say so myself. She was a pretty girl… that's why I drew her smiling." I looked back behind me quickly at Maggie's parents. They seemed touched by Angela's sensitivity to their daughter, and it was in a good way, too.

"I'm really sorry for what happened to her, and I hope my work helps you," Angela said, turning the sketchbook around again so she could close it.

* * *

><p>"The gelatinous puddle was decomposed tissue, from which our labs extracted and analyzed liver and kidney samples by mass spectrometer," Brennan explained. I was chewing on the inside of my cheek again; it's a bad habit, I know, but the key word there is <em>habit<em>, which is defined as something that you do without thinking. Although I had no trouble paying attention to and understanding her, the jury was having difficulty focusing on her because they didn't completely understand what she was saying. They don't have a doctorate in forensics like her, or an online and library education like I do. "The hydromorphone level in her liver was eight point four and six point six in her kidney. Death occurs at seven point seven and five point two respectively."

"And the reason they would be giving the victim this narcotic?" Levitt asked Brennan during her cross-examination.

I tried to catch the anthropologist's eye and I kept nodding towards the jury. Brennan gave me a questioning look at my behavior, but I sighed and gave up. I didn't know how to more plainly say "simple words" without actually speaking. "Short-term periosteal reaction on the right proximal lateral humorous was consistent with a bound individual."

I felt like groaning in frustration. _Arm! Arm! Brennan, you're awesome, sweetie, but it wouldn't kill you to be imprecise just once! Just say "arm" instead of "right proximal lateral humorous" next time!_

"So, to rephrase-" Levitt started, but Brennan interrupted him.

"And the placement of wrist restraints, coupled with her hyperparathyroidism, would account for the stress fractures on the distal anterior surface of both the radii and the ulni."

_No. No. Don't do it. I know life's being particularly difficult now, but it is extremely unprofessional. Restrain yourself, Kirkland!_

"Her bones broke because she was struggling to free herself," Levitt restated more simply, giving Brennan a weary look, trying to communicate with her to not interrupt and to speak in what she would probably liken to "child talk."

Brennan didn't get the memo. "Yeah. I believe I just said that."

I gave up trying. _Oh, screw it. _I let my head fall down to the table and my forehead connected with it with a thud. It hurt, but it was so necessary. Hodgins and Angela, on either side of me, jumped in surprise, but didn't say anything.

Levitt plastered a smile to his face. "Thank you, Dr. Brennan. That'll be all for now." He cleared his throat, dismissing Brennan from the stand. To the judge, he added, "I'd like to move for a recess with the right to recall the witness, your Honor."

The judge wasn't exactly cotton-candy and ice cream happy, but she agreed to it. "Okay. We'll meet back here in thirty minutes." She hit her gavel to make it official, dismissing court for the moment.

* * *

><p>I rubbed my forehead, trailing a couple of paces behind Brennan and Booth. Sometimes I feel like a third wheel, which almost makes me wonder if they just have me around to intimidate their suspects. <em>No, that's silly. There are people in the FBI that can do that just as well. And… probably much more legally. <em>"It was well-reasoned," Brennan defended herself.

"Yeah, it was very scientific," Booth mumbled in agreement.

Fortunately for Booth, Brennan didn't have time to recognize his discouraged tone. Unfortunately for everyone else, that's because Deaver had come to confront us on our apparently epic failure of testimonies. The aloof jury consultant's whole outfit was blue; blue earrings, a blue button-down, and a blue pencil skirt, coupled with blue pumps. Well… that's a lot of blue.

"Oh, not the hell-consultant again," I muttered, sinking even further into self-pity.

"You didn't listen to a thing I said!" Deaver's tone suggested that she was taking this as the most serious possible offense to her. "Is anything you're wearing blue?" She demanded of me.

"Given that you look like a freaking Smurfette, you're probably not colorblind. Therefore, I think I'll let you figure that out on your own."

"See? You're rude, distant, and you speak like being nice would get you attacked!" I had to steel myself so I didn't flinch. _Yeah, well, what the hell do you know?! Why don't you just go bother someone who won't be reminded of years of abuse when you act like your normal, bitchy self?!_ Deaver turned on Brennan angrily. "_You_ were like Klaatu the robot up there. Would it have killed you to speak English?"

"I wore blue!" Brennan's voice pitched as she was taken aback by the brutal verbal lashing. "I looked at the jury!"

Booth leaned between Brennan and I and, over our shoulders, frowned at Deaver disapprovingly. "You know, for a people person, you're a little rude," he stated honestly.

"At what point did the facts stop working for you?" Brennan demanded.

"I have no problem with the facts, as long as the jury can understand them," Deaver shot back.

"Well, you're underestimating their intelligence!" Brennan accused.

Deaver leaned forward aggressively. "You're overestimating their ability to stay awake. When these S-and-M perverts walk, it'll be on your conscience."

I twitched. _That's it. If one thing the foster system has taught me, it's how to give as bad as I get. _"Why don't you just shut the hell up?" I snarled suddenly, taking an intimidating step forward. Deaver stepped back on instinct, surprised. Even when I'd yelled at her earlier, I'd kept myself somewhat in control, but now I was giving up on speaking loudly with my arms crossed. And when I get really angry, then I get really scary. The last time I'd gotten really angry was when I'd been played by Epps. But I didn't want to give him the satisfaction, so I didn't show it. The last time before that, I had gone a little crazy on Charlie Sanders' murderer and Shawn Cook's tormentor, and done some real damage to him.

"Excuse me?" Deaver squeaked.

I smirked, glad that her arrogance had finally fallen by the wayside. She's just like all of the other superficial idiot women I've dealt with; scare her a bit and she's not nearly as tough as she pretends to be. "I think you heard me perfectly. I'm done with you pushing people around, got it? You don't know anything about either of us. Just because you never had to deal with anything worse than being told "no" doesn't mean that the rest of the world doesn't have more serious things to worry about!

"You said that I was acting like being nice would get me attacked. How do you know it hasn't, sunshine? News flash: in middle school, I tried to help some girl's kid brother after he fell off of the swing set. Her boyfriend hit me for it. You want to know why Dr. Brennan doesn't speak with your vocabulary? It's because she doesn't _need _to. We use laymen's terms to simplify concepts for ourselves, but she's smarter than that. She can understand how the human body works when most people just take everything for granted, and she uses correct terms to properly explain how innocent people were murdered. I think it's _you _who can't understand her, not the jury, and you're taking out your own envy on us because we're what you pretend to be."

"Maybe you should leave," Booth quickly interrupted. Deaver nodded meekly and shrugged herself back together, eyes glued on me almost frightfully as she turned and rushed off down the hall, presumably to find Levitt again.

After she was out of earshot, I gave a large sigh of relief. "Oh, man. I needed that."

"What, to terrify a jury consultant?" Brennan asked, amused.

"No, to vent my frustrations on someone who deserves it so I don't feel guilty about it later." I crossed my arms and watched Deaver turn the corner of the hallway with a twinge of satisfaction. "She has no right to go at us just because she doesn't like us." Booth made a small noise in his throat and I turned to him, raising my eyebrows. "What? Don't tell me you actually _agreed _with her!"

"Well, not entirely," Booth said, wincing backwards like he thought I would punch him.

My lips pulled into a frown and Brennan looked insulted. "Not entirely. So that means partly. Well, I was perfectly clear! Didn't you think I was clear?" She asked, looking to me like Booth had kicked her dog.

"Crystal, in my opinion," I replied, and Brennan turned back to glare at Booth sharply. Oops. I hadn't meant to get her even angrier with him. "But Dr. Brennan, the jury – and their consultants, for that matter – haven't had the same experiences that we've had. We educated ourselves on forensics, and they chose to learn something different."

"Listen, Bones, I know you care about this case, but I think you should let them see that," Booth said, trying to regain his dignity from cowering away from a seventeen year old.

"So, I should perform?" Brennan translated, deadpanning him.

"Just a little bit, yeah," Booth nodded slightly. "I mean, do you see how I portrayed myself as a no-nonsense, tough guy cop?"

Brennan frowned slightly, not quite understanding. "You are a no-nonsense, tough guy cop."

"Exactly!" Booth beamed and poked Brennan's shoulder. "And I think that it wouldn't hurt if the jury saw who you really are."

This turned out to be the wrong thing to say. Brennan seemed like her feelings had been slightly hurt. "Well, I don't know who you think that is, Booth, because this _is_ who I really am. Just _this_," she motioned to herself. Finally, giving Booth an irate glare, she whirled around and stormed off. Just before she turned around the corner, Michael stepped in front of her and Brennan stopped just short of running into him.

Booth groaned when the two started talking and the tension in Brennan's shoulders melted. "I really don't like it that they're getting along so well in these circumstances," I shared, annoyed at Michael more than I was Brennan.

"You and me both, kid," Booth grumbled, exasperated.

* * *

><p>Michael's testimony started almost immediately after the court session began again. Although by no means do I like him, I have to grudgingly admit that he is slightly more personable than Brennan or I. His physicality gets the jury's attention; his speech gets their continued focus. He is confident and knows what he's doing, and tries not to leave any doubt as to who to believe.<p>

"In my opinion, the high levels of hydromorphone are more consistent with recreational use than for pain relief," Michael shared with a slight smile. _Dude, do you have any idea how stupid you look when you smile all the time?! This is a girl's murder that we're talking about! You seem like a psychotic! _The "in my opinion" part seemed like a deliberate counter-attack to Brennan's decisive and factual testimony.

"Could you explain?" Meredith was patient with Michael, knowing that the reason he had to ask was to show off both the professor's intelligence and his nice communication skills.

"Well, I might not use all the technical language, but I'll try to make myself understood," Michael joked, chuckling.

The jury laughed, lightened already by Michael's presence at the stand. I clenched my fists and looked back to Michael. The bruise on his face was even more pronounced than yesterday, and it was quite satisfying to know that I'd been the cause of the mar on his skin. Levitt stood from his seat to object. "Objection. The witness is impugning another witness."

"Sustained. Continue."

Michael seemed flustered. "I'm sorry. I – uh – I don't do this professionally." _Neither do I, but I didn't make jokes at the defense's expense. _"People who need to relieve physical pain will stop after the pain disappears. It doesn't take more than an average dose to accomplish that. Drug users are trying to bury emotional pain, which means they'll medicate until they feel nothing."

I frowned, shaking my head very slightly. That actually wasn't true. Yes, the facts themselves were there, but you had to look at the facts of the case in context. Maggie was having drugs forced into her body because of the damage being done to her. She was in pain and kept crying out, but sometimes chronic, intense conditions become unresponsive to medication after a period of time. Hyperparathyroidism, Maggie's disease, is one such condition.

"This is why they have a tendency to overdose, like Maggie Schilling," Michael finished.

Brennan leaned closer toward Levitt to whisper, "That's not accurate. Sometimes intense chronic pain does not respond to medication."

"I'll bring it up in cross-examination," the lawyer quietly promised.

"What about Dr. Brennan's claim that her pain was somehow connected to the victim being bound for a length of time?" Meredith questioned. Well, I have to hand it to him; he covers all his bases.

"Well, the Costellos have already stipulated to the fact that they bound Miss Schilling as part of their rather unorthodox sexual life, and Dr. Brennan agrees that Miss Schilling had hyperpara-" Michael cut himself off, blinking as though the big, scientific word had blitz attacked him. _Well, maybe. I can't give up hope, _I thought to myself dryly. "Well, if I can simplify, a thyroid condition that could weaken her bones. There's no need to look for bondage scenarios."

"This is ridiculous," Brennan told Booth, affronted by Michael's disregard for contextualization. "He's ignoring all the facts!"

Michael wasn't done. "With respect to my former student, Dr. Brennan-" He nodded to her briefly. "-With findings like these, I don't know why she became a forensic anthropologist. She seems to have ignored all but her preconceived notions about the case."

Brennan flinched back like she'd been hit and I suddenly found myself pinching my nails into the palms of my hands to keep from going and giving Michael another bruise. Now it's not so much that he's hurting a friend's emotions, but it's also that he's being arrogant and tearing down not only her case, but also her reputation in a court of federal law.

"Objection," Levitt called from his seat.

"Sustained," the judge quickly ruled.

"I apologize." Michael bowed his head in a gesture of apology.

"Do you disagree with Dr. Brennan's data?" Meredith asked him, continuing the examination.

Michael shrugged, not saying yes, but not saying no, either. "Well, sometimes doctors can use data to confuse a very simple situation. I mean, I'm a doctor, but I could barely follow her!" While some of the jury laughed, my glare just intensified. _Happy thoughts, Holly! _"This case is about people, not incomprehensible technical jargon. I don't think that these people should be convicted of murder just because Dr. Brennan sounds smart."

"Yeah, well, I don't think murderers should be allowed to walk free because you're seducing half of the jurors, you manipulative, disloyal loser," I muttered under my breath. A smile flittered briefly over Angela's face before she focused on the trial again, and Hodgins sent me a slightly amused grin from my other side.

"Your honor, really!" Levitt objected, disgruntled.

"The jury will disregard Professor Styres's personal view of Dr. Brennan. Court will adjourn until nine a.m. tomorrow," the judge ordered, banging her gavel to release the jurors and witnesses.

"He wasn't acting as an objective expert," Brennan whispered furiously as I hung back to let Brennan and Booth (and unfortunately Levitt and Deaver) catch up with me on my way out the doors. "He was making up a story!"

"The judge chastised him in front of the jury," I reminded her, trying to be helpful. "That might work for us. His lack of professionalism makes him seem inadequate as an expert witness."

"The hell it will," Deaver mumbled. "The jury loved Styres! He looked like a regular guy who's not allowed to speak the truth because the stupid rules get in the way."

"The rules of jurisprudence aren't stupid," Brennan disagreed.

Deaver rolled her eyes. "Dr. Brennan, you need to learn the difference between reality and perception. A trial is all about perception."

I glared at the woman like I could set her on fire telekinetically if I tried hard enough. "Have you already forgotten that conversation we had earlier?" I asked, a warning clear in my voice. "I am more than willing to refresh your memory."

Deaver looked startled, but she looked back to the floor and sped up until she had passed us by. I smiled, happy, and crossed my arms. Brennan's fists were clenched tightly as she looked to Levitt almost desperately. "Put me back on the stand! I can rebut everything that Michael said!"

"She can do this," I agreed, trying to help her persuade the lawyer. "Michael is not acting objectively. Dr. Brennan can come across as empirical but she _does_ feel, and she can drive the point across. Anything that Michael says based on any evidence strong enough for conviction, I guarantee Dr. Brennan can refute it!"

Levitt sighed. I could tell that he wasn't going to make a decision before he gave himself time to weight his options. On one hand, the jurors weren't too taken with Brennan, and Michael connected with them much more easily. But on the other hand, Brennan was the better scientist, and someone less experienced than those on the jury had been able to see that. Booth and I have both vouched for her several times and by the jury's reaction to us, we hadn't alienated them, either. "I'll think about it," he finally said, before shaking his head to himself and walking down the hall.

"I've never been in this position before," Brennan growled in frustration. "I need to get back up there!"

"Alright," Booth agreed quickly, nodding to show he really did agree and wasn't just saying it to shut her up. "Just let me talk to him."

* * *

><p>"You shouldn't worry so much, Dr. Brennan. Increasing stress levels can cause excessive anxiety, which can manifest as physical ailments."<p>

Brennan was curled up on one end of the couch in her office, her feet tucked under her. Her black shoes were sitting in front of the couch, waiting for when she got up to do something and needed them again. Upon giving me a ride back to the Jeffersonian, she had ditched the professional and uncomfortable court outfit in favor of a dark colored blouse to wear while she reread her notes almost frantically.

Of course, I hadn't known this beforehand. I'd been getting my messenger bag back from Angela's office and preparing to leave the Jeffersonian to go back to my flat for the night. I figured since I was getting excused from my job, I might as well take the opportunity to get extra sleep. Then Goodman had found me and asked if I knew where Brennan was. Assisting him in his search for the anthropologist, we'd ended up in her office.

Now I raised my eyebrows. Her normally cool exterior was determined and anxious and her shoulders were tense. Just like I'd told Levitt, Brennan really does care, but she compartmentalizes. I understand that. She solves murders and spends her work hours with dead bodies. If you didn't compartmentalize, you'd go insane with a job like that. Brennan just compartmentalizes extremely well, and she would stretch herself thin to keep another person from being murdered by the Costellos.

"Trial going badly?" Goodman presumed, stepping into the office further. Brennan looked up, surprised, and frowning slightly. "You don't usually cram at the last minute."

Brennan groaned, throwing the papers she'd been holding against the couch cushion next to her. "The jury likes Michael better than they like me. Apparently, that's a problem." She looked between Goodman and I, frustrated. "Are they stupid?"

Making himself comfortable, Goodman settled into the chair across from her. "Compared to you, yes, they are stupid."

I leaned over the back of the couch, looking at Brennan sympathetically. It's not her fault that she can't empathize with a jury when she only cares about convicting murderers. The jury, not completely understanding the sciences involved, defer to deportment and an ability to relate to judge the people on the stand. "Dr. Brennan, you are the best anthropologist in the world. You transition between French and English quickly enough to fluently work for two different organizations in two different countries, and at the same time you work federal murder cases, while being a New York Times bestselling authoress." I laughed slightly. "I think that, compared to you, everyone's a little stupid."

"You have many skills, Temperance," Goodman agreed amiably. "But not one of them includes communicating with the average person on the street, which is exactly what juries are made of."

I shot Goodman a confused look. _Dude, we're trying to boost her morale, not tell her that she can't get through to the jurors!_

"I'm a better forensic anthropologist than Michael Styres," Brennan exclaimed, scowling down at the notes from her case.

"Which is why, two years ago, I hired you instead of him." Goodman replied without pause.

Brennan, however, was shocked. "Michael applied for this job?" Clearly, she hadn't known. I motioned towards Goodman for him to continue. _Go on. You've got an audience._

"Yes."

"His credentials are better than mine," Brennan said softly, still unsure as to why she had been hired over her former professor.

"Yes," Goodman agreed, and leaned forward towards her. "But you are the more rational, reasoned, empirical scientist. And you _care._ And if he tries to convince you otherwise, tell him to go to hell." He finished, completely serious.

* * *

><p>I hummed to myself anxiously, sitting on a bench outside the courtroom. Brennan was standing up beside me, reviewing her notes a final time before the trial restarted. Today would be the day that the judge ruled guilty or not guilty, and the Costellos might beg guilty and cop a plea bargain if they thought we had much of an edge to us.<p>

"You're doing it again," Brennan said suddenly. I looked up, surprised. She didn't look from her papers, trying not to break her focus. She wasn't irritated, just making an observation. "You hum sometimes. I think it's because you're nervous."

I blinked. "I didn't realize it was that obvious," I mumbled.

"Is it safe to approach, Miss Kirkland?" I looked up again. Michael was standing with his hands in the air, like he was surrendering.

I had the feeling he would approach no matter what I said. "Go on ahead. If you start being stupid again, then you just might have another bruise."

"I'll keep that in mind," Michael said, rolling his eyes, annoyed. "The great women have spoken."

"Don't charm, Michael," Brennan ordered. She closed her case file and held it at her side so that Michael couldn't see her notes again. I was still kind of guilty that I'd had to ruin her relationship for her, but I know that it's better that I did now instead of letting Brennan be stunned at the beginning of court.

Michael let his hands fall to his sides and pretended I wasn't there. Leaning over Brennan's shoulder, he moved his hands to her sides. "I think you're taking this too personally," he said casually.

"You think I should be more rational?" Brennan asked.

"Yes."

"Go to hell," Brennan replied, pulling away from him. I smiled. _That's my girl!_

* * *

><p>"Only a prolonged struggle, not sexual activity, would cause the tearing on the medial head of the gastrocnemius muscle on the distal portion of the bone and-"<p>

"So, in lay terms?" Levitt interrupted Brennan, giving her a look. He sent a sideways glance up at the judge, trying to survey her reaction. On either side of me, Angela sighed and Hodgins shook his head to himself. Levitt had decided that it was worth putting Brennan back on the stand, and now she can't remember to speak in non-anthropological terms.

Brennan paused, stopping short in her speech, then said, "The muscle avulsed."

Levitt turned back to the jury. "She pulled a muscle," he restated.

"Because she was immobilized," Brennan added quickly.

"Tied up," Levitt corrected.

"Yes," Brennan nodded again before continuing with her testimony, trying to make the jury understand that Michael hadn't been thinking of all of the facts as a whole. "These conditions have to be contextualized. The inflammation to…"

I saw Levitt and Booth look at each other. Levitt seemed questioning and Booth gave the slightest nod. I frowned slightly. What's up with those two?

"Dr. Brennan, why did you become a forensic anthropologist?" Levitt interrupted sharply.

Brennan stopped in the middle of her sentence, blinking several times in confusion. "I beg your pardon?"

Levitt raised his hands in front of him, absentmindedly rubbing his palms together. "There must be some reason you chose this field out of the hundreds of other careers someone of your intelligence could have chosen. Was there some… emotional reason, perhaps?"

Meredith rose to his feet and raised his arm. "Objection! Relevance, your Honor?"

Brennan's slight smile (directed to the jurors) faded slightly. "I don't see how this pertains to the case," she told the judge.

"Dr. Brennan is cold, distant, and alienating, your Honor." Levitt stated to the judge, sounding completely matter-of-fact.

"Hey!" Brennan protested, her voice slightly squeaking as she took offense.

"I need the jury to _understand_ why she's so cold, so that they might be willing to accept her testimony," Levitt explained, sounding completely rational. _And how do you propose on doing that? You don't know anything about her! But Booth gave you some sort of cue, so – oh, no. Booth!_

Meredith snorted derisively. "Her personality issues are not relevant to this case."

"They opened up this line of questioning, your Honor!" Levitt objected, pointing at Meredith with one hand. "When Dr. Styres was on the stand, he wondered why Dr. Brennan became a forensic anthropologist, so the defense must have thought it had some relevance then."

The judge looked regretfully at Meredith. "Sorry, Mr. Meredith. You _did_ raise the issue." Authoritatively, she hit her gavel. "Overruled." She nodded at Levitt. "You may continue, Mr. Levitt."

Levitt nodded at the judge in respectful gratitude. He took a deep breath to keep his composure and inclined his chin slightly before starting, like he knew that if something went wrong, then this entire plan would crash and burn. _Booth, what did you do? _"Dr. Brennan, your parents disappeared when you were fifteen, and no one's ever found out what happened to them. Isn't that correct?"

My hands clenched the edge of the table tightly. _He didn't. Why would he do that?_ Booth must have told Levitt about Brennan's family history. I only knew about it from when I'd heard Booth and Cullen conversing during the Cleo Eller case. I hadn't brought it up with Brennan simply because she hadn't told me, so I didn't have a right to talk about it. _She lost her parents when she was fifteen. _Although I'm not fond of the family I used to have, before they (my foster parents and brother) had gone and abandoned me, hadn't abused me like the other families. They had tried to understand and tried to make me part of their family, but it didn't work out, I guess. During the Christmas season, less than five months ago, the foster parents had driven away and the brother had enlisted for the army without even telling me! Luckily for me, he was over the legal age and had given me the amount of cash I needed, along with the papers, to fake having parental consent to live on my own and pay rent until I got the job at the bar.

Brennan made the connection to Booth, too. Looking as though someone had hit her, she looked to Booth and gave him an expression that suggested she thought she'd been betrayed. Although I understood why Booth had done what he did, as an attempt to make the jury appreciate her and listen to her more, I was still furious that he'd done something like that without Brennan's consent. It's just not right.

The judge herself looked intrigued and I wanted to scream. "Please. Answer the question, Dr. Brennan." _No! Not you, too! _I felt like shouting. I wanted to stand up and march to the stand, then drag Brennan out of there so that she didn't have to talk about something like that. It hurt me and I had tried not to develop a sense of attachment for the kinder family that I'd lost, so who knew how much it hurt Brennan?

Brennan took a deep breath and visibly steeled herself. "That's correct."

"It must be very painful," Levitt prodded. "Is it fair to say that you've been trying to solve the mystery of their loss your whole life?"

"Xena," Hodgins whispered softly. He was looking down at me in concern. "You alright? You look like you're trying to break the table."

I spared a quick look at my hands and could see why he thought that. My fingers were turning white because I was squeezing the edge of the table so tightly, and I let out a long breath I hadn't known I'd been holding. It does explain why I was starting to get a bit dizzy. "I'm fine," I said listlessly, forcing myself to let go of the table. I flexed my fingers as feeling returned with the circulation and looked back to Brennan, ignoring the concerned look Hodgins gave me for another second. _They don't know, _I thought to myself. _Booth knows I live on my own, and he knows my parents are missing, but no one else knows. And even Booth doesn't know that it still hurts sometimes. It's why I don't really want to trust any of them… I started to trust and they left me._

Brennan leveled a disgruntled look at Levitt. "Do I want answers? Yes! As to how that has affected my behavior, which I assume is what you're trolling for, I don't put much stock in psychology."

"Is that why you wrap yourself up in techno-speak? So you don't have to feel how these victims remind you of your own parents?" _Damn it, Levitt, why don't you just let it go already?!_

"How I feel doesn't matter," Brennan insisted strongly. I admired how her voice didn't even shake. "My job doesn't depend on it."

"But it's informed by it," Levitt countered the anthropologist's defense. "Or are you as cold and unfeeling as you seem?"

_This isn't fair. _It was clear to me just by looking that Brennan didn't quite know how to answer. The entire room seemed to still and the silence said enough. _But no pressure, Dr. Brennan, _I thought to myself, glaring at the lawyer. It was one thing for Booth to have told him about it; it was another for the lawyer to take it this far. Doesn't he know anything?! This trial isn't about us! It's about arresting murderers for the death of a girl named Maggie Schilling!

Brennan took a deep breath and started off uncertainly. "I see a face on every skull. I can look at their bones and tell you how they walked, where they hurt. Maggie Schilling is real to me. The pain she suffered was real. Her hip was being eaten away by infection from lying on her side." Brennan paused and blinked and I had the distinct feeling that the emotions were trying to get the best of her, too. She held out a hand to gesture to Michael briefly before pulling her arms back to her almost protectively. "Sure, like Dr. Styres said, the disease could contribute to that if you take it out of context, but you can't break Maggie Schilling down into little pieces.

"She was a whole person, who fought to free herself. Her wrists were broken from struggling against the handcuffs. The bones in her ankles were ground together because her feet were tied. And her side, her hip, and her shoulder were being _eaten away _by infection."

Someone choked behind me. I didn't have to look to know that it was Maggie's mother, and the soft rustling was from her father's shirt as he moved to comfort his wife.

Brennan's voice was getting a note higher and she had to stop talking for a couple of seconds while she talked. The emotions (anger, sadness, and frustration) were beginning to affect her speech, but that wasn't bad. It was exactly what Levitt had been going for. The only good thing brought because of this was the jury's reaction. They seemed sympathetic and I think the blonde woman on the far left is actually crying.

"And the more she struggled, the more pain she was in. So they gave her those drugs to keep her quiet. They gave her so much it killed her. These facts _can't _be ignored, or dismissed, because you think I'm…" Brennan looked to the side for a moment and laughed dryly. There was no humor in her voice. "_Boring_, or _obnoxious, _because I don't matter. What I _feel_ doesn't matter! Only _she _matters. Only Maggie."

Brennan locked eyes with Michael. After holding her gaze for a few seconds, Michael looked down, having the decency to look a little bit shameful.

* * *

><p>During our lunch hour, Brennan rushed out of the courtroom like the hounds of hell were after her. I ditched Angela and Hodgins (in the nicest way possible) and ran after her, pushing through the throng of the jurors as they were leaving to the courtroom's little luncheon area.<p>

I caught up to her as she rushed out the doors of the courthouse. The court actually has a very nice picnic area across the street, with a small playground in the same area. The playground was deserted and so were the picnic benches. I trailed after her as she rushed down the steps. That she didn't even pause to say something to me told her that she was still terribly upset about the turn of events that Levitt had forced her to endure.

But she didn't tell me to go away, so I followed her across the street and under the shade of the picnic structure. She threw herself onto a bench and rested her elbows on the wood of the table, covering her face in her hands. I didn't wait before sitting across from her, patiently waiting for her to regain her composure and gain her bearings again.

When her shoulders weren't trembling anymore I spoke up, although I started off on a happier note. "On my way out, I heard the Costellos talking to Meredith. I think they're trying to cop a plea to be charged with a crime that won't warrant the death penalty, so they know that they're going down. Your testimony really did it for them. You shot down Michael, and even he knew it. The jury was really affected by it; I have no doubts the Costellos will be found guilty. That's a win for the Jeffersonian."

"Great." Brennan seemed spent and her voice was tense, full of pent up aggression that she didn't want to exact on me.

I paused, looking down to the table. "I know you probably want to be alone, but I thought it would help if you knew that someone else understands how you must have felt on that stand. I mean, Levitt just kept pushing, and I've never been in a court session for murder, but even I know that if someone had objected for relevance near the end, then it wouldn't have been overruled. You shouldn't have had to answer to what he asked you. That was wrong."

I sighed when she didn't reply. "I guess I'm stalling. What I really wanted to tell you was that I really do understand. I understand it was wrong and stressful, but that's not what I mean. The last foster family I was in – the one I'm still registered in – I haven't seen any of them since the last Christmas season." I waited to see if she would ask me about it, about if I was happy because I was safe from them, but it didn't come. _I guess Booth must have honored my wishes for it to be a secret. He didn't tell. _"I was never really part of their family, but to their credit, they did try. They did their best to include me and they provided me with the necessities. But one day, the parents just drove off. They said they'd go to the store but they didn't return.

"After the necessary forty-eight hours, the foster brother filed a missing persons' report. The police didn't look into it for very long, and that's when I was left alone again. The brother enlisted in the army… I only found out because he left the acceptance letter out in the open." I scoffed. "He didn't even have the decency to tell me himself. I wasn't as close to them as you must have been with your parents, so I know it's not at all the same thing, but I do understand sort of." I paused. "Probably better than anyone else that had been in there."

Brennan looked up. Her eyes were dry but her cheeks were flushed and I felt even sorrier. She really didn't deserve to have to deal with what had happened. "I don't understand why you're telling me."

"Because I sympathize," I answered with a shrug. "And with something like that, you should know that you're not really that alone." _I'm such a hypocrite. I never try to reach out to anyone else, and here I am, telling Brennan that it's okay._

"Thank you," Brennan said sincerely. Although it was a simple phrase, it conveyed all it needed to.

* * *

><p>"Guilty on all counts," Angela sang as she leaned in the doorway of Brennan's office. Brennan looked up from her phone and I stopped, now unable to get out the door. I'd just been telling Brennan that it had been a pleasure to work with her again and that I was leaving.<p>

"Yep," I agreed, happy with the sentencing.

Angela craned her neck to see the screen of the doctor's phone. "So he owes you another dinner, huh?"

"No," Brennan sighed, closing whatever screen had been open and setting her phone down on the table in front of her. "I won't be seeing him anymore."

Angela looked down, embarrassed. "Sorry."

"I was foolish to be so open with him," Brennan said, shaking her head as she berated herself. "It was irrational. … You know how you get when you're tired."

"Yeah," Angela agreed, nodding quickly. She hesitated for a minute before offering, "Do you want to go out? Grab a drink? Or a non-alcoholic beverage?" She added, extending the offer to me.

Brennan shrugged heavily. "I think I just want to work."

I stepped forward and smiled up at Angela. "I should be getting to the bar and doing some work to make up for the past three days. It really was great to meet you." How fitting, that the last time I see them (for all I know; logic says it is, experience says it just might not be) we close a case formally in a court of law.


	26. The Man in the Fallout Shelter, Part One

I shouldered by bag and pushed on. Today was one of the better days at the bar. While the sun is beginning to set over the cityscape of Washington, D.C., the beginnings of the holiday thrill had been drifting in the air today, and as such, we had less customers and less work. We'd had such an easy day I'd actually been released early to go home.

Holiday thrill? Oh, well, it's Friday. Tuesday, the Costellos had made a plea bargain and been sentenced as guilty for the kidnapping and murder of Maggie Schilling. Wednesday, I'd attended my own court for the Martin Davis murder and quickly been cleared of all charges. Yesterday, I'd returned to work, only to find that Easter had snuck up on me and made its presence known in the bar (Helena had decided to wear a headband with white fluffy rabbit ears to work to celebrate). This Sunday was Easter, and even the convenience store where I buy my groceries had an aisle dedicated to the festivities.

Since I don't actually have anyone to celebrate with, I just bought myself a two-dollar bag of Hershey's and called it good.

It seemed like the turn of events to reflect positivity had been life's way of making up for the nightmare that I'd taken to calling "The Howard Epps Incident." In turn for dealing with a psychopathic serial killer who _totally_ undressed me with his eyes (and, God forbid, probably raped me in his mind), I was now getting a streak of good fortune.

This was actually what I was contemplating as I was walking through the city to get back to my apartment, but it quickly left when I saw the van coming up behind me accelerate and then coast to a stop by the edge of the sidewalk a little bit ahead. Briefly, I considered doubling back and taking a different route, until I recognized the license plate.

Exasperated, I broke into a jog and came to the passenger's side of the SUV, looking through the vehicle and to the driver as the window rolled itself down. "You realize how lucky you are that I didn't turn around and find a different way home?" I asked Booth accusatorily. "You don't just stop along the road in this part of town. It's creepy and unnerving."

"I'll keep that in mind," the FBI agent said dryly. "Good afternoon to you, too, kid. What are you doing around here, anyway? I was just driving when I saw you walking from the bar a few blocks back and thought, "let's go say hi to the junior agent-squint," but then I realized that you're going the opposite direction of your house, so I just followed in case you were going to see a friend or something."

"Firstly," I started, completely serious. "You followed me? All the way from the bar?" I let that float for a minute. "Dude, that is… unspeakably weird. Secondly, I am going home."

Booth frowned at me. "But you live up north of the bar. You're walking south."

It was around this time that whatever divine intervention that had been providing me with good luck stopped doing so. I had totally forgotten that I'd lied to Booth about where I lived. "Well, uh…" I started, trying to think of a very good excuse. "I was actually going to go to the store first," I "confessed," trying to make it seem believable. "There's a store up a ways that sells Belgian chocolate."

Booth had narrowed his eyes and almost seemed suspicious of my lies for a moment, but then he shrugged, like he couldn't think of _why_ I'd lie to him, and I felt like kicking myself, but that would rouse the suspicion again. "Girls and their chocolate," he muttered, before saying more clearly, "So are you going to get in or just stand there?"

"Why would I get in?" I asked.

Booth exaggerated a long-suffering sigh. "I'm arresting you for murder," he said, painfully sarcastic.

"That was hardly even funny the first time."

"Well not five minutes ago I called you a junior agent-squint, and why else would I have tracked you down?"

"I don't know. You did follow me for several blocks. Maybe you're a stalker at heart."

"Oh, now that's comedy gold."

"I'll add comedian to my list of aspirations."

"Before or after terrorist control?"

"I think it'll replace homicide investigator. I think I can scratch that one off now."

I didn't realize how much I enjoyed poking fun at people until I'd started to have the little, playful arguments with Booth. It had been gradual, but after he'd found out I'd been abused, even though he didn't know the full extent, I'd become a bit more relaxed around him. This definitely isn't the first time we've gone back and forth pointlessly.

"You think?" Booth returned, although he was smiling slightly. He pressed the button on the side of the door and the car clicked as the doors unlocked. "We've got a new case," he sang, hanging it over my head.

I growled slightly to myself, still irritated that I haven't learned to tell this man "no." Still unable to resist the tantalizing invitation, I yanked at the door handle and pushed my messenger back under the passenger's seat. I got in and closed the door before hooking up my seat belt.

Booth grinned triumphantly. "I guess that's a yes to the offer, then."

"What can I say? For a street rat, I've got high ambitions."

"For a street rat, you've got an advanced vocabulary."

"Oh?"

"I'm not sure how many street rats would throw out words like "ambitions" or "right periosteal lateral" in everyday conversation."

"Touché," I hummed. "So am I working for the FBI or for the Jeffersonian?"

Booth gave a half shrug, like it didn't really matter to him just so long as I was there. "I'm inviting you via the FBI, but I'm sure you'll be welcome at the Jeffersonian."

"Sure," I said, rolling my eyes. "One day I'll find out why you're keeping me around."

Booth frowned slightly. "We like you! You're our junior agent-squint. Haven't I already said that?" Booth started to drive, pulling the car away from the side of the road and back into the street.

"Yes, but really, Booth. Try to be realistic." I gave him a look; I wasn't being rude, really, but I know it's not going to last forever. "I'm a seventeen year old without college education. How long do you really think that this arrangement will last?" I asked quietly, not really expecting an answer.

Booth looked from me to the road, almost worried. "I don't think there's really a limit. I mean, even Cullen knows that you're helpful. Some cases might not have been solved without you. You tipped us off about the Costellos' expert witness. I mean, you prodded Hall into hitting you with the cane, and that got us the murder weapon, which led to the conviction."

"Don't worry about it, Booth. I'm sure that if you ever need someone to hit you in the future, all you'll have to do is ask."

* * *

><p>"Sweetie!" Angela whined. The forensic artist was definitely into the Easter spirit. Her tight, low cut top and short shorts were both white, and her top had downy fur lining her neck and waist. Her eye shadow was pink, and her long black hair was decorated with a black headband with a set of fluffy bunny ears on top. One was folded over in that way that Bugs Bunny's does. She wore black dress shoes and tall, light pink socks, and her shorts had a little rabbit's tail sewn onto the back.<p>

"Angela, I don't want to!" Brennan exclaimed, rushing to slide her security pass and climb up the stairs to the examination platform. Unlike Angela, Brennan was dressed like a normal human being.

Angela followed, getting up the stairs before Brennan's clearance timed out. "Sweetie, could you stop galloping for just two seconds?"

"I'm better able to withstand peer pressure when you can't catch me!"

I blinked. _What did I just walk into? _For a moment I seriously considered going back to the entrance of the Jeffersonian and waiting with Booth while he got his visitor's badge. I guess there's something to be said for being forced to be watched by security guards; they know you, even when your hair still has traces of blonde, and they don't make you sign in every time.

"Call it a favor, okay?" Angela pleaded, following Brennan around the platform.

Brennan had a skeleton lying on the examination table and held a clipboard in one hand and an uncapped ink pen in the other. "How is me going to a company Easter party doing you a favor?"

Angela put her hands on her hips. "Remember what happened last year?"

"I didn't go last year," Brennan reminded the artist.

"Yes, exactly!" Angela threw her arms up in the air. "It took me _weeks_ to collect all those photocopies. I need you! Friends don't let friends photocopy their butts at company Easter parties."

"I really hope you were intoxicated when you made that decision in the first place," I called, announcing my presence. Instead of waiting around for someone to let me up the platform, I just crossed my arms down on the main floor and looked up at Angela over the railing.

"Of course you laugh now," Angela waved her hand at me in warning. "But just wait until you start photocopying yourself at parties."

"I don't like parties. I hardly think it's an issue."

Angela held up a hand at me, like she was telling me to stop arguing. She shook her head at me. "I've already had alcohol, if you can't tell. But now how am I going to enjoy this party knowing that my best friend in the whole world is in the lab, eyeball to eyeball with Skeletor?" She asked me, looking back to Brennan in clearly exaggerated distress.

"Who?" Brennan asked, standing up straight and furrowing her brows in confusion.

"Skeletor is a child cartoon's villain who looks like a skeleton," I supplied helpfully. _Hm. I think I just realized what purpose I serve for them; I'm a portable, easily-operated translator between artist, scientist, and cop._

"Would you _please_ just come to this party?" Angela begged Brennan, clasping her hands in front of her desperately.

Brennan sighed, clearly not content with this, but she also knew her best friend well enough to realize that the carefree artist wouldn't give up. "Twenty minutes," she conceded finally.

"Bones!" Booth's voice echoed around the dome-shaped Jeffersonian Medico-Legal building as he passed by the security guards. "Alright!" He grinned, slapping the front of a case file against his palm. "You're already here!"

Angela smiled, her rabbit ears flopping slightly when she turned suddenly to see Booth. "Happy Easter, Seeley!" She chimed.

"Oh, wow." Booth paused for a moment, taken aback by her costume, before shaking it off with a shrug and continuing up. "What are you, a rabbit?" He swiped his security card and I followed up the platform on his heels.

"Yes. What's wrong with a little holiday spirit?"

Booth extended the file out to Brennan, and with a bit of intrigue, she took it from him. I think she's hoping it's an excuse not to go to the Jeffersonian's party. "What's the context?" She asked.

I looked over the skeleton already on the examination table. The bones were off white and frail – probably Brennan exercising her job as an anthropologist for a historical society. Having already read the file in the car, I answered for her. "A federal property on Dupont Circle where Congress puts up visiting specialist has a scheduled dig so they can put up a solarium. While they were starting to prepare for that, they found a fallout shelter from back in the last century, and there's a skeleton inside."

"How long was it in there?" Angela asked, frowning. The cheer was slowly leaving her body and her shoulders were slumping.

"The shelter was built in the fifties," Booth explained. "Part of the whole A-bomb panic."

"It's not a suicide," Brennan announced suddenly.

"Exactly!" I beamed. "I am so glad I'm not the only person to think that!"

"Why not?" Booth whined for show. He and I had already come to the conclusion of a homicide, and he had ordered the FBI to ready the skeleton for transport. I think he's just being silly and trying to irritate Brennan. "Hole in the head, gun at the side, it's a suicide!"

"He shoots himself in the head and somehow his arm ends up across his chest?" Brennan asked, crossing her arms in disbelief and carefully holding the case file so that she wouldn't bend the pages while she did so. "Bring the skeleton in and I'll _prove_ that it wasn't a suicide."

Booth broke into a huge grin that lit up his entire countenance. "Happy Easter, Bones!" He brought his hand to his mouth and whistled shrilly through his fingers. "Come on, boys, bring it in!" A pair of FBI forensic recovery agents had the security guards hold open the doors for them while they marched inside with a stretcher between them. A pale off-white sheet covered the skeleton from the outside world.

Brennan smiled very slightly, pleased that she'd be able to get to work so quickly, but Angela frowned, closed her eyes for a moment, and shook her head vigorously. "Oh, no. We are going to the company Easter party."

"Well, you go ahead," Brennan offered a little too quickly. "I'll do a cursory examination and I'll meet you in a few minutes." Booth scanned his card so that the FBI pair could come up onto the table to lay down the stretcher on the second exam table.

Brennan reached the body and pulled the sheet down from around it, revealing the cracked and time-worn skull. "Alright," Booth said, looking away quickly, disturbed. _Dude, you've got to learn to get used to it. It barely even phases me anymore, and you're supposed to be the tough guy! _"Whoa. Okay. There you go. Wow." He turned his back and started back to the platform stairs, taking his leave. "And I leave the junior agent-squint with you."

Brennan looked away from the skeleton for a moment and quickly stopped him. "Booth, will you escort Angela to the Easter party and make sure she doesn't photocopy her butt?" She asked hopefully. Angela threw her arms in the air and rolled her eyes.

Booth's eyes lit up and he started to scramble for an excuse not to. "Oh, no, no. I can't do that. You – You see, I've got some really important last minute shopping that I have to do. For Easter presents."

Angela sighed at his reluctance and linked arms with him against his will. "It's not last minute until tomorrow," she corrected.

"Come on," Booth whined as Angela started dragging him with him. "Bones. Bones! Help me out here!"

I looked back to Brennan. "We're not going to save him from her, are we?"

"No."

I smiled and shook my head as I lifted a pair of latex gloves from the stainless steel equipment table. "I'm not surprised Booth's not getting a break. You know what they say; no rest for the wicked!"

* * *

><p>On my way back down to the examination platform after getting water for Brennan and I, I stopped by Hodgins' laboratory to swing by and say hi, just to make sure they knew that I was there. When I walked in, I stood at the doorway and watched the little contraption on the table. It looked like a remote-control robot, about a foot tall, with no casing over the circuitry. "Stop!" I heard Zach order it. I couldn't see the guys, because they were on the other side of the room that I hadn't fully entered yet.<p>

Well, the robot certainly didn't stop. Instead, it bent over and started pushing itself over with its arms in a lame somersault. "Stop!" Zach commanded again. The robot finished its totally tripped-out acrobatics and balanced on its feet for a second before it continued to mechanically walk again.

"Turn," Zach pleaded.

The robot froze and stayed absolutely still. Hodgins burst out into laughter and, unable to stop myself, I made my presence known by laughing, too.

"Your robot reminds me of you," Hodgins mused fondly. "You tell it to turn, it stops. You tell it to stop, it turns. You ask it to take out the garbage, it sits on the couch and watches reruns of _Firefly._ And hello, Xena. Glad to see you could drop by in time for the Easter party."

"After I fix the voice recognition protocols, this is going to blow those gomers at M.I.T. away!" Zach insisted, scowling in frustration. "Good afternoon, Holly."

"Hey, boys," I returned. "Thought I'd let you know I'm here. Dr. Brennan and I are on the platform doing a cursory exam on a new case that Booth got. Hodgins, if you think I came here just for the party, then you're freaking insane. And what's _Firefly?_"

Zach looked like I'd asked him what two plus two equaled. "You've never seen _Firefly?_" I shook my head, unsure as to whether or not I would regret asking, when Zach bowed his head to me in deepest apologies. "I offer my condolences."

I blinked, but decided not to ask.

Hodgins shook his head at me. "Come on, Xena. We've got about half a liter of pure alcohol here! Dump it in the drinks and we've got the best Easter party in history!" I shook my head and headed back out of the lab.

* * *

><p>I bent down carefully over the mostly skeletonized corpse. The old-fashioned pinstripe jacket was much too big for its owner, now that the owner was literally just bones. I was very aware that not very far from my hair was human remains and that motivated me to hurry. With a pair of tweezers and latex gloves on hand, I manipulated the fabric of the suit pocket and removed two slips of paper folded together.<p>

"What do you have there?" Brennan asked curiously.

I set the tweezers on the instrument tray and unfolded the degraded papers carefully. It seemed like the shelter and the pocket had provided a lot of protection against the elements, but nothing can stop time. They were yellowed and tender, but I could still make out the letters. My face fell. "Oh. It's tickets to Paris, France, one way. Pan Transit airlines, but the names are blank."

I turned slightly when movement caught my attention. Booth was coming up to the platform from the entrance to the Medico-Legal labs. "Pan Transit went out of business in the sixties," he supplied helpfully.

"I thought you were at a party," I accused, raising my eyebrows.

Booth groaned and sighed up at the ceiling. "Ugh. It wasn't a party, it was a Star Wars convention!"

"So why aren't you still there?"

"You're a riot."

Brennan held out an evidence bag so that Booth could see the recovered bullet casing. "This was still in the skull when we began our investigation."

".22 caliber," Booth identified quickly. _He's like a ballistics team in one person. _"It matches the gun he was holding. Did you open up the suitcase?"

"Nope," I denied. "Dr. Brennan doesn't want to compromise her objectivity by seeing what's inside."

Booth turned on Brennan and raised his eyebrows at her incredulously. "What, like a name and an address?"

"I prefer to make unbiased initial observations," Brennan steadfastly insisted. Up on one of the catwalks going around the second level, Hodgins and Zach were quietly creeping past. Hodgins was carrying a large beaker of what I suspect is probably the pure alcohol he mentioned earlier. Brennan's sharp observation caught them. "Is that pure alcohol?"

Zach was caught by surprise and didn't have a clever lie planned. "Yes, Dr. Brennan," he honestly answered, too flustered to make an excuse. Hodgins shot Zach a very dirty look and I had the feeling that Zach was lucky that there were other people were there to hear whatever Hodgins might have said otherwise.

"You really think Goodman's going to let you spike the drinks after the Fourth of July fiasco last year?" Brennan called up to them knowingly.

Hodgins sighed loudly and then turned around and back to Zach. "We may have to rethink this," he said loudly enough for us to hear.

"Zach, I need you to clean these bones," Brennan interrupted.

"Now?" Zach asked, crestfallen. I almost laughed at his expression.

Hodgins really did laugh. "Burnt," he exclaimed with a smirk, turning back to the direction they had been heading before, and carried on with the alcohol.

"And I need you to search the clothing for insect evidence!" Brennan added swiftly.

Booth chuckled. "Jesus, Bones. Happy Easter!"

Angela's tapping foot got out attention. The outlandishly dressed artist had her arms crossed and she looked extremely determined. The rabbit ears on top of her head made her look a bit less intimidating. "Okay, you people. Listen to me," Angela ordered authoritatively. Booth and I exchanged nervous glances before looking back to Angela. "There is a party going on upstairs, okay? A holiday party. We're going up there. We are going to talk to some people, we're going to sing some songs, and we're going to drink alcohol." She pointed at Booth bossily. "You are going to kiss me under the influence of alcohol. On the lips." She twisted to look up at Hodgins and Zach. "I might kiss you guys, too." Finally, she turned back to the platform and Brennan and I shared a common anxiety. "I might kiss the both of you, too, in a festive, non-lesbian manner. But we are _going _to that party."

* * *

><p>"Angela <em>really <em>wants to go to that party," I told Goodman. Upon hearing about the skeleton from the fallout shelter, he had opted to come see what was going on. While Angela impatiently waited for Brennan to finish a thorough examination of the bone markers on the cranium, I was updating the director of the Jeffersonian on life this afternoon while Booth was waiting with his arms crossed for Zach and Hodgins to finish their tests in their lab. "Apparently, she is going to kiss Booth, Zach, Hodgins, Dr. Brennan, and myself, which I'm not that okay with… Anyway, we found tickets to Paris in the jacket. The suitcase has remained unopened. The remains are that of a Caucasian male. Dr. Brennan intends to file a basic report soon enough."

"Very good," Goodman nodded to himself before looking up at me curiously, but calmly. "Tell me; why are you here today?"

I blinked and frowned slightly. "Well, Booth invited me onto the case. Do you not want me to be here?"

"It just seems like a young girl should be spending the holidays with her friends and family," Goodman explained.

My shoulders fell. Easter weekend is a time that people spend with their loved ones; too bad for me, I don't have any. "I'm estranged from my foster family and I lack a social life," I stated bluntly, hoping that Goodman would exercise the tact that I _know _he has and refrain from asking more.

Goodman's eyes widened for a moment and he nodded his head at me respectfully. "I apologize for asking."

"No, it's fine. You have a right to know why an unqualified teenager is poking around in your work."

The lights cut for a split second and I my head snapped up. When they came back on, the light system seemed even sharper than before, and a blaring alarm assaulted my eardrums, screeching violently. "What is that?" I yelled over the noise, covering my ears with my hands.

"Biological contamination," Goodman answered, clearly surprised. He looked around for a source but didn't find one.

The sliding doors on our side of the security guards began to slide shut much faster than they normally do. They closed so quickly that there was a thud as they collided and the seals on them went into action, the locks clicking on. Booth ran at the doors, pushing on one of them and panicking. "Whoa!" He shouted.

"The doors seal automatically," Angela sighed, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling in disappointment. _This is really not her day. _"Don't worry about it."

"What do you mean, don't worry about it?!" Booth demanded harshly.

I took a moment to collect my thoughts. _Zach and Hodgins are running tests on some of the bones, which means that they might have cut through with a surgical instrument. The doors shut and the alarms started. And Goodman mentioned a biological contamination. _"Don't try to shoot the doors!" I called to Booth quickly. "Really, don't! We must be going into quarantine!"

"She's right," Brennan said. She was still by the remains but she had lost interest in them. She stripped her hands of the latex gloves and I couldn't even hear them snap over the sound of the alarms. "There's no use panicking until we know what it is."

"What _what _is?" Booth growled, frustrated.

Just then Hodgins and Zach came into the main, domed area of the lab and my eyebrows shot up at their attire – or lack thereof. Hodgins' curly hair was matted and dark, and Zach's hair was plastered to his head. Both men only had towels around their waists. I blinked. _Okay. I am not going to comment. I am sure that there is a perfectly good reason. … Well, I hope there is._

"Uh, we might know," Hodgins said, raising one arm guiltily, the other staying firmly over the towel to keep it in place.

"I cut into the fallout shelter bones and the biohazard alarm went off," Zach elaborated, his voice unusually high to cut through the high-pitched wailing of the quarantine system.

Goodman seemed confused and surprised. "Were you conforming to autopsy protocol?" He asked, his voice slightly accusatory, like he knew that they probably weren't.

Zach threw Hodgins a very dirty look. "One of us was," he grumbled, just loud enough to hear.

Hodgins had the respect to look sheepish. "The other was… drinking alcohol."

"And you didn't have your mask on," Goodman concluded, raising a hand to cover his face. "Oh…" Well. Quarantined on Easter. That is definitely a good reason for missing work. _Hey Andy, sorry I didn't come in yesterday. I was a bit busy being locked up because I may have been exposed to a dangerous biological compound. Guess the Easter bunny had a bad day._

Oh, yes. I can already tell what fun this will be.

* * *

><p>An hour later, we had an official on the large monitor in Brennan's office, overlooking the rest of the room. It turns out that, even when everyone is busy and trying to go home for a holiday weekend, officials dressed as rabbits work pretty quickly when there's a biohazard involved. I was staring at the floor, letting Goodman handle the quarantine procedures, while Zach and Hodgins shared the couch (still not dressed. Really, people, it was okay right after you set off a biohazard alarm and got in a decontamination shower, but you've had a while to get dressed) and Brennan sat in the chair behind her desk. Booth and I were leaning against the wall while Goodman sat on a chair across from the entomologist and intern.<p>

The official on the screen was reading off of a piece of paper. "_The pathogen is coccidio idomycosis," _he said, his voice crackling slightly as it came through the speakers.

I looked up, surprised. "Valley fever?" I translated for Booth's benefit. I frowned back at the ground. "Hm. Well, assuming it came from the bones, and they'd been sealed in a fallout shelter, I suppose the viral infection could have weakly survived."

"_It was picked up in the scanner in the discharge vent at Mr. Addy's station," _the official said, looking straight at me even though I wasn't looking at him. _Damn, I shouldn't have brought attention to myself. "Who is the little girl?"_

I looked up long enough to roll my eyes. "I am seventeen. I'm hardly a little girl. I'm Dr. Brennan's consultant, allowed access to a federal case through Agent Booth and the FBI."

"Wait, but what's valley fever?" Booth asked, looking at me for answers. I suppose it makes sense, since I first called it valley fever. Almost everyone has heard of valley fever at some point; enough to know that it's a serious disease that has been a problem in the past, but most people don't know that much about it aside from its devastation due to it not being much of an issue anymore.

"It's a fungus that can lead to pneumonia, meningitis, spontaneous abortion…" Zach listed off, anxiety clear in the way he was frowning at Brennan's coffee table.

"Don't forget death," I reminded him wryly and rather pessimistically.

Goodman shook his head woefully, covering his eyes with his hands. "The alarm sounded shortly after Mr. Addy cut into a human bone. That must have been the source."

"_Was he following autopsy protocol?"_

"Of course," Brennan said, sounding mildly offended that the official had thought that her grad student hadn't been following procedure. "However…"

"I was… drinking alcohol," Hodgins confessed, hanging his head and raising his hand.

The official looked irritated, but that's understandable. Other than that, he seemed frustrated at the circumstances. "_And now he's there with you, breathing the same air."_

"Hey, I got into the decontamination shower with Zach!" Hodgins yelled, suddenly irate. "Haven't I been through enough hell?!" I sighed. This was exactly what I'd been worried would happen; with everyone scared of a biological contaminant, tensions would run high and instead of working to protect themselves from it, they were releasing emotions on each other. Well, at least, Hodgins is.

"Is he contagious?" Booth demanded, looking from Hodgins to the official on the monitor.

"_Dr. Hodgins may have inhaled the spores, yes."_

Booth shrugged his shoulders and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Okay. It must suck to be Hodgins right now, but the rest of us, we didn't inhale. So it's okay if I go, right?" He jerked his thumb back to the doorway.

"It's not quite that simple, Booth," I corrected.

"Dr. Hodgins may have exhaled the spores all over us," Goodman started, and I took over for him, knowing that Booth would probably appreciate a straightforward and blunt answer rather than a technical analysis of the situation.

"The spores of valley fever are easily airborne. They get on Hodgins or Zach, then the air around us, then us or our clothes. If we have spores on us and we go out in public, then before we know it, we've caused an accidental pandemic. The procedure for treatment is painstaking and expensive, not to mention the risk margin. We can't risk it."

"_She is right," _the official agreed reluctantly, shrugging his fake fur-clad shoulders helplessly. "_We have no choice but to impose quarantine. Valley fever can be fatal and we can't risk an outbreak. Just calm down, and let us handle things from this side."_

Booth growled under his breath. "Is anyone besides me worried that a guy dressed like Bugs Bunny is in charge?"

The officer gave him a stony glare, all sympathy gone. "_Happy Easter." _He reached forward to his computer and shut off the video feed, and Brennan's monitor went black.

Booth glowered at Hodgins and Zach. The latter cowered, shrinking down to let Hodgins's frame hide him. "Okay, you know what? If this is fatal, I will shoot both of you!"

Angela sighed, shaking her head at Booth. "Maybe you guys could go get dressed," she suggested softly.

"Just change into your extra clothes," Brennan instructed both men calmly. "The CDC will probably need to seal up the clothes we were wearing at the time of the alarm in case we did contract it. We all have an extra set of clothes, don't we?" Various heads nodded around the room.

"I've, uh, got some extra clothes in a suitcase in my van," Booth said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"You can probably ask the CDC guys to pick that up for you," I told Booth, before speaking up. "I don't." At the look of surprise I got from Goodman, I defensively added, "What? I don't work here and I don't carry clothes in my vehicle, mostly because I don't own one!"

"It's alright, sweetie," Angela said, taking up the role of peacekeeper as she tried to make sure everything smoothed over without any damage. She smiled at me reassuringly. "I have some extras that I can loan you."

I set my expression carefully into neutrality and nodded in agreement. It's not like I really have a choice. _But the CDC will take my sweater, and I doubt Angela has any on hand. Most of what she wears is tank tops, short sleeved blouses, and low-backed camisoles. So I definitely won't be able to hide all of the scarring. _My heart sank at this realization. _Everyone here is going to have to find out about the abuse, and Booth will find out that I was lying to him when I told him that he'd seen the full extent of it._

_Personally, I think I'd be better off taking my chances with valley fever._

* * *

><p>I sat in a bathroom stall of the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal lab, my arms wrapped around my knees, which were pulled up to my chest. I was wearing the extra pajamas that Angela had thoughtfully provided, and unfortunately for me, my first thoughts had been right. No sweaters. I did get sweatpants (which is nice, they're soft and warm), but I was being forced to wear a black camisole. The lace trim at the bottom was a bit girly, but not the worst part. The spaghetti strapped, thin fabric was cut low in the back; by the time it decided that skin needed to be covered, it had already almost halfway down.<p>

I had absolutely no way to cover the scars on me. My arms were completely exposed, and the thin lacerations and silvery scars and cigarette burns were bare. I could feel the cool side of the stall against the whip marks on my shoulders and back. I closed my eyes tightly and pressed my forehead to my arms, hoping that maybe I could just disappear in here and they would all forget about me until the CDC gave me my normal clothes back.

_Look on the bright side. _I tried to reason with myself. _I won't have to lie any more. I've felt guilty about lying to Booth; now I won't have to. And I don't have to come up with any excuses as to why I don't let people touch me. And now Goodman probably won't ask any more unsettling questions about why I spend my holidays alone._

I sighed heavily, pulling my head back up and then leaning back against the wall again. "I am in misery," I sang quietly to myself, musing about how fitting the lyrics were. "There ain't nobody who can comfort me."

The door to the bathroom opened. The brighter light from outside cut in and I stopped singing immediately, holding my breath. "Sweetie?" Angela called softly. "Are you alright?"

"I'm just fine," I lied.

"Come on, Holly," she continued, sounding sad and worried. "You can't just stay in here forever. Ten minutes is long enough." I didn't reply, so the artist continued to speak. "The CDC is here. They have some shots to take as a precaution, and they're going to want everyone there. You can't just stay in here all night."

"Actually, I bet I probably could," I quickly disagreed.

"If you don't come willingly, I will tell Booth that you're contemplating suicide."

"One less worry for him, then."

Angela took several steps forward and the heels of her shoes clicked on the tile. "Sweetie, that's not even kind of funny." She had reached the door of the stall now and she rattled the handle. "Come on. What's the problem?" Her voice went lower and turned soft and sympathetic. "Is it about the valley fever? Sweetie, we'll be fine if we just go and get the shots for it."

"I'm not worried about valley fever," I ground out.

"Then what _are _you so distraught about?"

_Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because you're probably all going to pity me and treat me differently? Maybe Booth will be angry with me for lying? See, Angela, I have these marks all over my body from where I was used as a fucking anger management toy._

Of course, I didn't say any of that out loud. Instead I sighed loudly. There really is no way that I'm going to be allowed to stay in here. If Angela couldn't talk me into leaving the bathrooms, then she would get Booth to come in and break the lock on the stall and drag me out, which wouldn't make my situation better. _Rip it off like a band-aid! _Usually the thought makes me laugh a bit, but not this time.

I took a deep breath to steel myself and pushed up from the ground. "Alright," I conceded to Angela softly. "You win. But I do have a good reason for wanting to be alone." I unlocked the door to the stall and let the door swing inwards. Gluing my eyes to the ground, I let Angela grab my wrist and pull me towards the door.

It took her a moment to really realize what she was seeing. "Oh my God," she breathed, and that's when I knew she had figured it out. She let go of my wrist and I let my arm fall limply to my side. Angela's hands covered her mouth in horror. "Oh, sweetie. What happened?"

"What do you think?" I countered, before looking up at her. "No one else was so angry at Charles Sanders's murderer for manipulating a foster child. Why do you think I've had so many foster families?"

She was totally dumbstruck. "Is this… why you always wear that sweater?" She asked. I nodded wordlessly. "Oh, sweetie," she repeated. "I am so, so sorry." I could tell she was sincere, too. She wrung her hands in front of her and she looked absolutely grief-stricken.

"It's not your fault," I reminded her. I inhaled deeply and then nodded to the door. "C'mon. The sooner we get out there, the sooner I can just get this over with." I paused before I said honestly, "I don't want pity. I really am okay now. I'm free of it. Really, Angela. Please just don't make a big deal out of it."

My hand hovered over the doorknob for a moment before I forced myself to twist it open. _Can't go back now. _I yanked it open quickly and pushed myself through, making my way across the room and back to the team in front of the platform with an air of confidence and with my head held high. _Angela knows. She didn't call me a freak. I can do it! I really can. And if they don't keep treating me the way I want them to, then I'll stop taking their cases. I can walk out of their lives just as easily as they can walk out of mine._

That realization bolstered me. No matter what changed, I would be able to free myself of it quickly. Even if I would be sad after I said goodbye, I could still do it. Although maybe… maybe I could give them a chance to decide for themselves how to react before I start planning for disappointment. Yeah… maybe.

No one saw me before I spoke to announce my presence. I had come up from behind them. On the good hand, when I keep my head up, my hair covers some of the scarring on my shoulders. "Alright. What's up, Doc?" I asked the CDC official. He was the same one that had been on the monitor feed in Brennan's office, dressed like Bugs Bunny, but now he was wearing an orange hazmat suit, complete with the visor.

No one replied. I looked away from the injection syringes on the CDC tray and reluctantly looked around the Jeffersonian team. Five sets of eyes, aside from that of the CDC people's, were staring at me and I clenched my fists. Zach and Brennan seemed stunned, which is good, because they wouldn't say anything in their surprise. Hodgins had dropped his jaw and seemed to have forgotten how to make his muscles move, and Goodman deliberately averted his eyes from a particular scar on my arm when he knew I had noticed. I met Booth's eyes defiantly for a moment. He was watching me sharply, but at least he was more interested in my face than he was my arms. _And they can't even see my back. _I was grateful to Angela for not mentioning it immediately when she joined us.

"I'm sorry. Am I distracting you all?" I demanded, my tone more callous than I had intended.

"Xena-" Hodgins started.

I held my hand up to stop him. "No. No, no, no. We are _not_ talking about this," I laughed derisively, gesturing to myself vaguely. "I don't care what you see or what you want to know." My voice held a certain power, which I was glad for.

"But your back…" Angela started in just barely above a whisper.

"-Is exactly the same as it was an hour ago," I interrupted snappishly. "Nothing's changed, so it's not a matter of interest at all." Suddenly the power that had rushed into me left just as quickly, like a balloon had been popped. I felt drained, and I waved at the CDC guy. _Come on. Hurry up._

I wouldn't be able to thank the official enough. He quickly continued, barraging through the awkward change in the atmosphere. He lifted up the steel tray with the syringes. "This is a cocktail of four antifungal drugs, including amphotericin B. Orally, you'll also all be taking ketoconazole, fluconazole, and itraconazole."

"That's great," Booth said hurriedly. He hadn't looked away from me, even though I was pointedly not meeting his gaze. "Then we can leave?"

"We won't know for a couple of days if the fungus took hold in your system," the official answered with a bit of a roundabout sentence, but it got the message across. Like he'd given a cue, the other CDC men picked up a syringe each and approached someone. The first went to Booth and held his arm steady while the agent complained.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! You're saying that we're stuck here over Easter? Look, you know, I have… places to go! I have obligations!"

"We all have obligations," Goodman chided. He rolled up a sleeve of his more casual shirt for the CDC to give him the shot.

"I'm supposed to go to Quebec!" Hodgins spat angrily, sneaking another look at me before quickly looking away again.

"Hey, whose fault is this?" Angela asked rhetorically, tilting her head up at the ceiling. With a pang of discomfort, I noticed that she was moving slightly between Hodgins and I. _I don't need you to protect me! Just because I've got some injuries doesn't mean I suddenly can't fight for myself anymore!_

"Who forced me to go to the party where I drank too much and had to hide from a girl?" Hodgins returned to Angela fiercely.

Angela crossed her arms and looked away from Hodgins pointedly. "Who never should have cut into a bone with a drunken fool in the room?"

Zach frowned for a moment before he angled himself to face Booth. "Who brought us human remains just to ditch a little paperwork?"

The CDC official reached me and held my arm steady, readying the syringe. I rolled my eyes at him; he was being obvious about his caution. He touched me just enough to keep me still and he was going out of his way to make sure he didn't touch any scars. "I'm not made of porcelain, you know," I huffed.

Booth growled under his breath and pointed at himself with both hands. "Oh, so you're saying this is _my _fault?"

Goodman lifted his shoulders slightly, almost defensively. "You knew Dr. Brennan could not resist."

"I'd have been able to resist if I was in Niger, where I wanted to be!" Brennan quickly retorted, feeling the pressure shift onto her.

Goodman raised an eyebrow at her incredulously. "You're blaming me?"

"Children, you're all to blame, okay?" I shouted, raising my voice even more at the end when the needle cut through my skin. It stung slightly but I didn't fuss. "You don't want to fill out paperwork, you don't let people go to foreign countries, you drink alcohol during work, you do dangerous things with drunk people. _Who cares?" _Okay, so maybe my temper was slightly raised because of the stress levels. "_Que sera, sera. _You can't change it, so stop yelling at each other and _deal with it!_"

Goodman sighed to himself. "She's right," he admitted reluctantly. "Arguing amongst ourselves will get us nowhere."

"Ladies and gentlemen, we'll have sleeping bags delivered," the CDC spokesman announced, gathering the used syringes up onto the tray again. I rubbed my arm slightly over where I'd gotten the shot. It stung, but it shouldn't last very long. "Please have your loved ones call me and we'll set up some kind of safe, quarantined Easter visit tomorrow night. Oh, and do be prepared for side effects of the medication."

"Nausea, fever, insomnia," Brennan listed off of the top of her head.

"Euphoria, dream state, mild hallucinations," Zach added.

Angela raised one arm halfway up into the air. "I'll take that, please."

"Early symptoms mimic a common cold," the CDC man advised. "Be on the watch for headaches, sinus effects, and fatigue."

"What if it manifests?" Goodman asked.

"First treatment protocol involves extremely painful injections into the base of the brain," Zach said, looking at the floor in dismay.

"You know what?" I turned slightly to see what Booth was doing, careful not to turn too much and let anyone but Angela, who had already seen, see my back. Booth was standing off to the side, swaying slightly on his feet, and staring up at a line of bright lights. I raised my eyebrows as he said, "I never realized how pretty all this shiny stuff is."

I puffed out a breath and crossed my arms jealously. "Now that is definitely not fair!" I have more stress than he does! Why can't I get a little loopy?

* * *

><p>AN: Before you all get upset that I changed the holiday this revolves around, please take into consideration that, for Holly, it's still early in the year. I know that the holiday was originally Christmas, however I've changed it for the purposes of my story's timeline. I don't mean to be rude by putting in an author's note just about this one point, but when I posted this on Quotev I got a lot of comments just correcting me about that and I'd like to establish that it's on purpose.


	27. The Man in the Fallout Shelter, Part Two

I looked up at the ceiling, uninterested with it but not having anything better to do. The soft, warm sleeping back had me tucked in all comfortably and provided me with a little pillow. I have to say on behalf of the CDC that they treat their quarantined buddies pretty well. Our sleeping bags are grade-A, the type that hunters or campers would use when staying in a tent. The lights were turned off as much as possible, but the Jeffersonian always has some dim, orangey lighting, which is how I could see shadows around the room.

My sleeping bag, along with Brennan's and Angela's, were making a sort of triangle on the floor of Angela's office, the tops of the sleeping bags all making a triangular shape and then rolled out in the other direction. Angela and Brennan so far had been tactful enough to realize I didn't want to talk, and they'd left me well enough alone.

"Look. I know it's against your natures, but I need your help," Angela said suddenly, her voice cutting through the silence like a warm knife through butter. It had been a sort of relaxing few hours of all lying down, awake, and pretending that we were asleep.

"For what?" Brennan asked, not budging from her position of lying face-up on the floor.

"To make Easter," Angela said, her voice gaining excitement.

"Why?" Brennan groaned. "Because we're the girls?"

"Yes." Angela replied, mostly just to bother Brennan. "We have to _decorate." _I closed my eyes, not reacting. _Kill me with a paperclip now, please. _"It's just all so tragic," Angela continued, even though neither Brennan nor I had responded to her. "A cheap wedding ring sewn into his suit, two tickets to Paris… it makes you wonder. Who was the girl? Can you imagine what it was like for her, waiting and wondering, and never knowing what happened?"

"I don't have to imagine," Brennan said lowly.

"What do you mean?" Angela asked, pushing herself up onto her elbows and twisting to look at Brennan.

Brennan didn't reply for a few seconds and I realized that she was beginning to regret that she'd said anything, so I took the attention off of her. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do for Easter," I announced.

"Good, _thank_ you," Angela breathed, sounding like she had been begging for us to participate for hours. "_At last, _you decide to take part!"

"I am going to go forget other people are here, and I am going to go solve a murder," I declared, pushing myself up on my elbows, rolling over, and getting to my feet.

* * *

><p>After getting permission from Brennan to take her security clearance card so that I could move on and off the platform to get equipment and whatnot, I spent fifteen minutes quietly clearing off a place to work at a table on the platform facing the entrance of the Jeffersonian. Then I got the Petri dishes and tools necessary to get samples from the bones and fabrics that Zach had stabilized in a glass cover over the exam table. I set up a microscope, several pencils, and a clipboard with a blank sheet. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I figured I would know it when I saw it.<p>

"Holly, it's after midnight!" I jumped slightly, taken by surprise by Booth's relaxed but excited voice. I was so focused on the case that I hadn't even heard him leave the office he'd been sharing with Goodman and approach. Startled, I lurched and hit the bridge of my nose up on the microscope. I sighed in frustration and cursed under my breath, but Booth didn't seem to notice. "Hmm? Easter Eve day. Both an eve, and a day. It's a holiday miracle!" Booth jumped, raising his arms up above his head and spinning around, a set of plastic rabbit ears on his head.

I rubbed my nose, wincing. "Still enjoying your medication, I see," I said, resolving not to be angry.

Booth didn't answer immediately, but he came up the stairs of the platform and dragged a stool over to the side of the table I was sitting at. He just sat there for a minute, staring at the microscope, while I watched him wearily. "Okay, so what are we looking at?"

I set the pencil down on top of the clipboard, glancing over my neatly-written notes. "Traces of lead and nickel in the dead guy's osteological profile."

"You don't seem too upset about missing Easter," Booth commented, jumping conversation tracks like he was on a pogo stick.

I blinked before shaking my head and resolving myself to explain. I pushed the microscope away to prop my elbows on the table and rub my temples while I explained. I was getting a headache from a lack of sleep and from the shot medication. "You already know that I am Atheist. Easter is a traditional holiday organized to celebrate Pagan rites of the Goddess of Fertility and the spring season. As I do not partake in religion, I find religious celebrations that have been reduced to children getting stuffed animals and chocolate and dollar coins pointless and a waste of my time and resources."

Booth rested his head on the back of his hand. He hummed, looking up at me while I pulled the microscope closer and readjusted the focus. "What are you? The Easter rabbit hunter?"

"Yes. I hunt wabbits." I said, faking the cartoony accent from _Loony Tunes._ Booth stared at me through narrowed eyes, unimpressed, so apparently I wasn't as funny as I thought. "It's the truth," I maintained, going back to the conversation's original atmosphere.

"It sounds like the truth, because it's based on fact, but you know, the true truth is that you just hate holidays, so you spout out these facts and you ruin it for everyone else."

I slammed my fist on the table, glaring daggers down at the surface. "I ruin the true truth with facts and I ruin everyone's holidays. I am so sorry for being such a bitch." I squared my shoulders, irritated, and I could nearly feel Booth's eyes on the marks on my back. "Take a picture. It'll last longer."

"You know it's not okay, right?" His sincerity and sobriety took me by surprise and I looked up at him, carefully neutralizing my expression. "I mean… I don't know how old you were when it started, and it really doesn't matter. You didn't deserve it. No child does."

I looked back to the microscope. "I know it wasn't okay for people to hurt me. I never did anything to them. But no matter how much pity, or sympathy, or frustration I have directed at me, that's not going to change."

"Is that why you lied?" I looked back up. Booth kept taking me by surprise. He knew, even when he was hyped up on drugs, that I had lied and yet he wasn't angry. "You said that the burns and cuts on your arms were as bad as it got. But there's more than you said, and your back is really awful."

"I lied because it isn't anyone's right to know but my own." I took a deep breath and then kept scowling at the table. "And I know what you probably want to know, so I'll make it simple. It started before I turned eight. The scars on my back are from a whip. The scars will probably never go away. I haven't been abused since I was put in my most recent foster family, which was a few months before I turned seventeen. Is that all? Am I missing anything?" I laughed hollowly. "Because after this I'm probably not going to be offering up any answers."

"What did you think would happen if anyone found out?" Booth was upfront and forward with the question. Either he knew I wouldn't appreciate him trying to sneak around, or he was still a little bit too unstable to be tactful.

I sighed, crossing my arms and leaning back in my chair. I really didn't quite know how to answer that. _Honesty's the best policy, especially with someone like Booth, who reads people like I read a book. _"I don't know. Pity, yelling, accusations, frustration, distrust. That sort of party."

"You really didn't think that we would try to understand?" Booth seemed like his feelings had been hurt, but I couldn't really think of anything to say to soothe it over, so I stayed silent. He wasn't done talking, anyway. "You know, I get that the adults in your life haven't been very honorable, but not everyone is like that."

"Do you think I don't know that?" I retorted swiftly, keeping a strong defense. "If I didn't, I wouldn't have trusted any of you enough to work on any of these cases."

"Did you know I was raised by my grandfather?" Booth asked randomly. Blinking and confused, I shook my head in answer to the question. _What… the hell does that have to do with anything? _"My dad was in AA." _Alcoholics Anonymous. Why are you telling me? – Oh, no. Your father was a drunkard? _"He would come home in a temper and… well, it should be pretty obvious, especially to you." _Booth was abused, too, by his own father. _"When my grandpa found out, he kicked my dad out and raised me himself."

"I'm sorry," I said, and I was sincere. I know firsthand how bad it is; Booth was incredibly lucky that he'd had someone with the power and motivation to stand up to his father before he was critically injured. Often drunken abusers don't know when they're going too far because they're too intoxicated.

"You shouldn't be," Booth chastened lightly. "It wasn't your fault. I understand why you don't want pity, but there is nothing wrong with sympathy. They weren't abhorred at you earlier, they were horrified because of what people had done _to _you."

My clipboard and microscope were long since forgotten, and it suddenly occurred to me that this hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment conversation. Booth must have been planning this before he actually came to the platform.

"And I can tell by the way you're acting that you're about ready to give up on everyone and go isolate yourself back in your own place, living alone in your foster parents' name and working every day at something you never wanted. Even now, you're trying to turn so I can't see the whip marks on your back." I frowned and sat up straight again. I'd been leaning over to keep myself at an unnatural angle and I hadn't even realized it. "And it's okay to keep secrets, because things like that are personal. But now that we do know, maybe we deserve the benefit of the doubt."

"You know, I didn't tell you that I don't like working at the bar," I said, saying the first thing that I could think of that wasn't incredibly stupid.

"Oh, come on. It's obvious." Booth rolled his eyes, like it was just plain ridiculous. "A kid who's happy working at a bar spends her free time being a teenager. You've taken all the free time you get and you've learned all sorts of skills; languages, science, some psychology, law. You're always saying you think that this-" the FBI agent motioned vaguely around the domed building with one hand. "-Can't last for you, but you're not making an effort to pull yourself out of it. You stepped into it voluntarily. You shot a Senator's aid in self-defense. You went after a terrorist on your own just so that he couldn't kill anyone else. You beat a child's aggressor and murderer, and you were willing to do work on a death row case. You barely flinched when you talked to a psychopath. You act like a hero even though I know sometimes you must be scared, and not out of pride. You do it out of a sense of justice. Holly, it doesn't take a genius to put these things together and figure out that a barmaid was not what you wanted for yourself."

"Well, it's what I've got," I whispered. "And I'm managing okay on my own."

"Okay," Booth repeated. "That's as good as it can be right now. We're locked in quarantine because of a deadly fever. I'd go so far as to say we're just _fine_."

_He's telling me I can change the subject now. He got his intended message across, and now we're good. _It was a huge relief now to not have to worry about Booth being angry at me for straight up lying to him, and somehow, knowing that he knew from experience what it's like to be beaten and unable to protect yourself made the scars less shameful. _Even if the others don't get it, they'll try. _A great burden of stress had been lifted off my shoulders, like I'd sort of been set free. It is a relief to know that there's something big about me that I don't have to hide any more.

If I still could, I would undoubtedly keep it hidden. But now that I can't, it's like a sense of liberty.

So it was with that feeling that I didn't try to cover my arms or my back the next morning when I woke after a few hours of sleep and left Angela's office, leaving Brennan to wake up on her own time. On the lower level of the lab, Booth had turned a support bar by the stairs into his own personal work-out space and was doing pull-ups and hefting himself up off of the ground repeatedly while Zach and Hodgins came down the stairs and ignored him.

Goodman stood by a cart of sustenance and Angela made a beeline straight for it from the restrooms. Her hair was brushed and instead of pajamas, she was now wearing casual day clothes.

"In some cases of valley fever, suppurating skin lesions appear," Zach prattled on.

Hodgins growled as Zach followed him, still spouting "helpful" facts about a fungus that we all may or may not have. "Will someone in a position of authority _please_ order Zach to shut up?!"

"Coffee. Coffee." Angela repeated monotonously, stretching her arms out and picking up an orange mug from the cart.

"Good morning, Miss Montenegro," Goodman greeted politely, although his words fell upon mostly deaf and caffeine-deprived ears.

"Where did this come from?" I asked, ignoring the slight hush that fell when I spoke. I motioned to the cart curiously. The top part had several plastic bottles of water as well as a hot coffee kettle, with some sugar and cream. The lower parts held a couple of bowls filled with prepackaged snacks like chips and granola bars.

"The hazmat team bought it over early this morning. Very appetizing," Goodman said with a bit of sarcasm. Nevertheless, the archaeologist seemed pleased to have someone to have civil and coherent conversation with. He looked over to Booth bemusedly as the agent lowered himself from the support beam. "Are you back with us?"

"Yeah. I think so," Booth groaned.

Angela took a long drink of coffee and immediately seemed revitalized. She held her mug possessively close to her chest. "Since we're all going to be stuck together for Easter, we should make the most of it."

"How?" Booth asked, filling a cup with the premade coffee.

Angela grinned. "We'll decorate this place."

"An excellent idea, Miss Montenegro," Goodman praised.

"I can get behind that," Zach agreed.

"I'm in," Hodgins stated.

"As am I," Goodman added.

"How about you and Bones?" Booth asked me. From what I knew about Brennan, I knew she wouldn't care to hang up lights and paper decorations everywhere just because of a traditional holiday. Myself? I appreciate that some people really enjoy holidays, and if there was a child here, I'd be all for decorating just so the kid can enjoy Easter the way that children are supposed to. As it is, no child is here, so I'm free to be my normal, anti-celebratory self. I shook my head slightly at Booth. Booth sighed. "Come on. What's the deal with Bones and the holidays?"

Angela sighed sadly. "Last night I spun a little story about two young lovers running off to Paris," she started, and I remembered this conversation clearly. I'd run off to work when it had abruptly ended. "But the man never shows up, and the woman is left wondering what happened to him. And I say, "imagine what that must have been like," and Brennan says, "I don't have to.""

Booth shook his head slightly. "I still don't get it."

"Oh my God." Goodman raised his hand to cover his face.

"What?" Booth asked, looking between the archaeologist and the artist.

"Brennan's parents disappeared just before the Christmas holiday when she was fifteen," Angela explained softly.

"And she never knew what happened to them," Goodman finished for her.

"Oh, God," Booth crossed his arms, taken by surprise by the new information. "That explains a lot." He glanced at me but didn't ask.

"I don't like holidays just because I've never had a reason to enjoy them," I stated bluntly. "If you've got a question, ask. The worst I can do is not answer."

Hodgins scoffed. "No, the worst you can do is flip us over your shoulder and snap our necks."

* * *

><p>Booth chased after Brennan up in the lofty catwalks, having their own tense arguments about the true meaning of the holidays, while Hodgins, Angela, Zach, Goodman and I all tried to go through the equipment and supplies of the Jeffersonian in an increasingly pathetic attempt at making decorations.<p>

"Maybe if we string a bunch of test tubes together and fill them with luminescent liquids," Hodgins suggested, holding up a few of the narrow chemical beakers.

"Nice," Angela praised. "Very festive."

"They'll probably give us cancer," Zach predicted.

"That would be fitting for this Easter," Goodman sighed.

"Hey, tidings of _joy, _gentlemen," Angela chastened. "You do know what joy means, don't you?"

"Decorations do not make a holiday. Family and friends make a holiday," Goodman said wisely, sounding disappointed and longing. _Does he have children? Is that why he's so upset?_

"We're friends," Hodgins said in response to his comment, looking up from the supplies and to the archaeologist, who merely gave him this 'look.' The entomologist's face fell slightly. "We're… not friends," he corrected.

"Ouch," I muttered.

"We are colleagues, friends, coworkers, yes. But for a father like myself and Agent Booth-" Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at him, but I just smiled slightly to myself, remembering what I'd guessed a while ago. _I was right. Booth does have a child. _"-A few glowing test tubes don't make up for missing a holiday morning with the children."

"Excuse me?" Angela blinked, shocked.

"Be kind. Rewind." Zach stated.

"Booth has a kid?!" Hodgins exclaimed.

Goodman frowned at the reactions. "Ah. Not common knowledge, I gather."

* * *

><p>After the discovery that Booth for sure had a kid, Goodman had, for lack of a better word, fled and ended up finding Booth as the agent went through the victim's suitcase. While looking through, they found some letters from a woman that had given us a name; Lionel. He hadn't been a very wealthy man but he had been very organized, if the belongings were anything to go by. Once Goodman told me, I took a walk around the Medico-Legal lab to tell Brennan, Angela, and then Zach and Hodgins, and then I followed Hodgins as he wanted to report to Brennan.<p>

So I followed after Hodgins, who followed after Brennan, who was walking fast enough for me to have the passing thought that maybe she was trying to get away from Hodgins. Hodgins, however, didn't seem to realize this, and he doggedly kept up at her speedy pace. "Puparia show that Lionel had valley fever."

"We sort of knew that," Brennan replied, sounding a little bitter.

"Wow, was that a shot?" Hodgins exclaimed, throwing his arms to his sides. "Because I apologized! I mean, Goodman doesn't get to see his kids, Zach doesn't get to see his family, Booth doesn't get to see his son. I mean, at least I'm an accidental Grinch. All due respect, you're the Grinch on purpose!"

Brennan shook her head. "I have no idea what you're saying to me."

"The Grinch is a relatively well-known creation of a children's author named Dr. Seuss. The Grinch is reputed as a spoiler of holidays," I translated. "And for future reference, I don't agree with Hodgins when he says you're a Grinch. We are on the same side."

Hodgins seemed to realize that he might get thrown under the proverbial bus by his boss if he didn't turn the conversation away from this topic. Luckily for him, Brennan's mind had already jumped subject tracks. "Booth has a kid?"

"You didn't know?" Hodgins asked, slowing down slightly.

"No," Brennan replied softly.

Hodgins stopped in place and then turned to go back in the opposite direction. "… I wasn't the one who told you." I rolled my eyes. _Booth, you really have to stop threatening to shoot these people._

* * *

><p>Through the hours that passed, we hadn't made that much progress on the case, which put me off a little. I mean, we're in what is possibly the most high-tech laboratory in North America, with the best equipment that money can buy, with the most qualified scientists around and not going home. It's not like we've got a lot of other ways to pass the time.<p>

Up in the loft, Booth, Brennan and I were hanging out. Booth was making a phone call to try to get more on the identity of the mysterious Lionel who had been running away with his lover to Paris, the city of romance. Hm. This seems more like a Christmas or Valentine's Day story, not an Easter one. Brennan was waiting for Booth to finish his phone call and I was stretched out on the couch, trying to relax a little to make up for not sleeping much the night before.

"Fall of 1958, heavyweight suit, kind of small, wool, black, first name Lionel. That's all I have…" Booth trailed off to listen to the person on the other end of the line. "Thanks, I appreciate it. You know, it being the day before Easter and all, I'll hold."

Booth held his phone down, pressing the microphone against his shoulder while he spoke to us. "Lionel had a suit made in town. The tailor shop still exists. His grandson owns it. But they kept their records, so we may be able to find Careful Lionel's last name."

"Careful Lionel?" Brennan asked curiously.

"As far as I know, that's not a pop culture reference," I said. "Probably just Booth making up nicknames."

"Well, he's a little guy with a toupee, drank a vitamin tonic, carried his own compass, with all of his stuff just so," Booth justified, slightly defensively. "Careful Lionel. What was he so worried about?"

"Well, considering how he ended up dead, I'd say that that's probably a pretty good place to start. Maybe he was threatened," I suggested, trying to be helpful.

"You have a son?" Brennan asked Booth. Although it seemed a little random, I wasn't too surprised that she'd breached the topic. I think the fact that she didn't know had been bothering her ever since Hodgins let it slip on accident.

"Yeah," Booth said, looking away from her like he already didn't like this conversation.

"You've never mentioned that." Brennan sounded slightly hurt.

"Well nothing brings people together like a holiday lung fungus," Booth said with sarcastic cheerfulness before he heard a voice through his cell phone. He lifted it back to his ear and resumed his conversation. "Yes. That's great… when?... Great. Thank you. Happy Easter." Booth lowered his phone and snapped it shut, ending the call. "Lionel Little. He picked up his new suit November 7th, 1958. He paid cash. He was supposed to come back the next day for a shirt, but get this: he never showed up. It was his wedding shirt."

Brennan doubled over suddenly and covered her mouth while she sneezed. "Bless you," Booth and I both said at the same time, not really thinking about it.

Then I swung my legs back over the side of the couch and pushed myself to sit up straight, watching Brennan carefully. Booth's eyes went wide when he made the connection. "Uh-oh. Is that valley fever?" The FBI agent asked anxiously.

* * *

><p>Booth laughed at something Angela said and Goodman waved the CDC away, having thanked them several times over for bringing us take-out from the group's favorite Chinese restaurant, Wong Foo's. Our – the Jeffersonian's – bone storage room has been miraculously transformed from a temporary bone morgue to a warm dining room after sterilizing the table and moving a couple of monitors in here with animations of a fireplace on their screens. I have to admire Angela for her determination to make this Easter as homely as possible. She had even gotten the CDC to bring us the Chinese, and Sid, the restaurant owner, had gotten orders for us. (Turns out that I like lo mien.)<p>

"So if Lionel was a coin collector, that might explain the levels of lead and nickel in his bone," Hodgins said, like this is a totally normal conversation to have over dinner.

"When do they insert the needle into your brain?" Zach asked directly, looking at Brennan beside him.

"I sneezed because the air is dry," Brennan maintained her reasoning. "It's not valley fever."

"Any other symptoms? Headache?" Goodman asked softly.

"I know I'd have a headache if everyone was bothering me about valley fever," I said with a roll of my eyes, purposefully drawing the attention away from the hassled anthropologist.

"Look, she sneezed twice, that's it!" Booth exclaimed. He changed the topic again. "Did you find anything else about the letters?"

"Quite a lot, yes," Goodman said casually, unscrewing the cap of a water bottle. "They are very, very passionate love letters."

"Careful Lionel had a girlfriend," Booth grinned, shooting me a look to see if I was as amused as he was by this. I just gave him a slight frown, failing to see why it was so pleasing to grin about with the threat of valley fever still hanging over us.

"A girlfriend who was in trouble," Goodman nodded.

"_Pregnant_ in trouble?" Angela asked, her eyes widening as she read into Goodman's words.

Hodgins reeled backwards in his chair. "Whoa! Apparently Careful Lionel wasn't so careful!"

"An unmarried pregnant girl in Oklahoma during the late fifties," I summarized, twisting my chop sticks.

"Do you suppose Lionel came up here to procure an abortion?" Goodman asked me speculatively.

"I don't know," I replied thoughtfully. "It's possible, but if he was up here, then why was his girlfriend still in Oklahoma and writing letters to him? Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

"You know what?" Angela interrupted. "This is really not a very holiday type story."

"Of course it is," Brennan was quick to correct her after swallowing another bite of her Chinese take-out. "The Christian holidays are built upon the Christ myth, which is based upon the travails of an unwed mother."

"Okay, can we just stop bringing up the whole "Christ myth" thing?" Booth asked wearily and sharply. "Some people here believe it's more than just a myth."

Brennan snorted, clearly unwilling to believe him. "Who besides you?"

Goodman cleared his throat pointedly. "That would be me, Dr. Brennan. I'm a deacon at my church." I looked down at the table in front of me, my appetite quickly dwindling. Why is it that this sort of embarrassing thing always happens with these people?

"I do," Angela added. "Christmas and Easter, anyway."

Hodgins gave a little, small smile and shrugged his shoulders, hands at his sides. "Although I believe organized religion is just another political movement designed to control the masses," insert Booth's eye roll here, "That doesn't mean God doesn't love me."

Brennan looked to Zach hopefully, like she realized she'd accidentally gotten in over her depth and wished someone would be on her side. Zach jumped up to the task. "I'm a rational empiricist all the way." He paused. "Unless you talk to my mother. Then I'm Lutheran."

I laughed to myself, shaking my head at Zach. That just seemed so silly coming from him. "I'm an Atheist, too, Dr. Brennan," I said, still smiling. _I'm genuinely smiling and laughing. It's the first time in a long time. _"You're not completely alone."

Brennan shrugged, no longer too enthralled with the argument. Instead she tried to rationalize it in her head and she managed to do so. "I can understand why you'd be sensitive, Booth. You have a child out of wedlock," she said, and although she sounded sympathetic, her words left the room in a state of awkward silence.

Booth clenched his jaw but didn't say anything, probably because he knows that Brennan isn't very socially apt. "Sweetie," Angela sighed, giving Brennan a little look.

"What?" Brennan raised her shoulders up defensively, not knowing what was wrong with what she'd said.

"The letters display a combination of both block and cursive," Goodman said quickly, hurrying to change the subject away from the matter of the nature of Booth's child's birth.

"A combination of printing and writing?" I clarified, trying not to seem like I was still thinking about Brennan's off-putting comment. I willingly helped navigate the conversation back to clear waters. "Well, I officially taught cursive when I was in… either first or second grade," I said, not quite able to remember which of the two it was. "Is it reasonable to assume that Not-Careful-Enough Lionel's girlfriend stopped going to school after second grade?"

Goodman seemed pleased that someone was helping him with his task. "Most white children in those days would obtain at least an eighth grade education."

"She was African American?" Brennan interjected.

"Why, I believe so, yes," Goodman nodded.

"Is there any way Lionel was an African American?" Hodgins asked, looking between Brennan, Zach, and I for an answer.

"No." Brennan shook her head firmly. "He was definitely Caucasian."

Angela whistled lowly, sadly looking off to the glowing embers in one of the computer animations. "A white man and a pregnant black girl in 1958 Oklahoma."

"That was bad?" Zach asked unsurely, catching the tone of her voice.

I scoffed. "More than that. It was illegal… for that matter, I think it was illegal here in Washington D.C., too. So why would they come here?"

"Well, they were running away," Booth theorized, using his arms to gesticulate, his meal nearly forgotten. "Lionel had two tickets to Paris, France. Where else in 1958 could a white man and a black woman get married and live together?"

"Bordeaux, France?" I suggested, only half serious. I feel like with this depressing conversation and my politeness given the look-look-away-when-she-sees treatment my arms and back have been getting when they think I'm not noticing have warranted me the right to be a bit of a smart aleck.

"Visiting hours, folks," the CDC man called from the door. He turned away immediately and trooped back towards the lab's entrance.

"Who's first?" Hodgins asked, throwing his napkin on the table by his take-out container.

Goodman pushed himself up from the table and pushed in his chair. "As director of this institution, I claim that right," he dictated, quickly moving around the table and out the doorway. _He must miss his children._

Angela coughed lightly and set her drink back down on the table, folding her hands in her lap. "Okay, brief announcement. You guys might recognize my dad, but I don't really want to talk about it, so, thanks. Okay?" She looked around and everyone gave a variation of a nod. "That's all," she finished.

* * *

><p>I sat on a chair up on the platform off to the side, trying to read a book that Brennan had let me borrow from her office, but I couldn't focus. I spent the majority of the time during the three visiting hours looking up from over the edge of the novel and watching with a soft smile as my… friends?... interacted with their families. I was at an angle so that I could see both the quarantined and the visitors, but the visitors couldn't see me because of the added height of the platform.<p>

Goodman had two children. Both were daughters, no older than six or seven, and they sure looked like twins. When they saw him, their faces lit up brightly with joy and it didn't seem to matter to them that their daddy was in danger of a deadly virus, or that he wasn't home with them, or that the surroundings weren't very Easter-ish. They were just so happy to see him. He also had a wife, who encouraged the girls to press their hands to Goodman's through the glass.

Hodgins's visitor wasn't family so much as she was his girlfriend. She was a beautiful brunette and she wore a light blue jacket, with a pair of fluffy animal ears on a headband that was half-hidden by her hair. I'd thought that maybe she was his sister until they kissed through the glass. Then I'd realized that they were most certainly _not_ siblings and I had looked back to my book while I waited for the blood to move from my cheeks.

I understood what Angela had said about her father when I saw him. He looked like an iconic Texan rocker through and through, with his dark sunglasses and sun-bleached beard and leather jacket. He could easily have been an actual rock star, and I just might not have heard of him before. Despite what Angela had said about not wanting to talk about her father, it was clear that she had missed him. They pressed their hands together through the thick glass door while they talked.

Zach's family was huge. They were all vying for his attention and low on space, even with the large doorway section available. The youngest wasn't any older than five and the oldest looked old enough to be Zach's grandmother. Several of the younger men looked like Zach, and I thought that maybe they were some of Zach's numerous siblings. Although Zach isn't very good socially in the lab, he was at home with his family, and he laughed as they told stories and he said pleasant hellos and jokes to the younger members of his family.

"I have met a lot of people, but you are proving to go on the list as one of the most confusing people I have ever met," Booth announced softly from behind me, startling me into jumping slightly.

I held up the book to see the title. "To be fair, it isn't that surprising to see someone read _Sparkling Cyanide." _It's an Agatha Christie novel that I thought might be interesting when I saw the title on the spine of the book.

Booth scoffed. "Come on. You haven't turned a page in over half an hour." His voice softened. "What did happen? You're watching them for a reason. I think you're still upset about your foster parents' disappearance, and you're trying to project. If I'm wrong, go ahead and tell me."

I stayed silent. What do I do in this sort of situation? Through the glass doors and behind Booth, Sid, the owner of the Chinese restaurant, coaxed a little boy into the visiting chamber. The little kid ran quickly in, smiling at Sid. Sid ruffled the boy's blonde hair. The kid had to be four or five, with a big smile. What clued me in to his identity was actually the deep chocolate eyes.

"Booth," I said softly, trying to get his attention to tell him to go to see his son.

"No, Holly," Booth said, mistaking what I was trying to say. "Listen, this is a weird circumstance for everyone else here, but it's a holiday, and we're all friends, so you shouldn't let yourself feel so lonely. We're all here with each other and no one here dislikes you, so you shouldn't feel bad about anything."

"Booth," I tried again when the little boy's bright smile increased tenfold when he saw his father.

"I noticed that they were all looking at the scars, too, when they got a chance," Booth admitted. "But they don't mean anything malevolent. They're shocked by it, and they are doing their best not to treat you how you don't want them to. They're trying to ignore it, but it's really kind of a big thing. I mean, I'm still a little surprised that you could have all of that and still turn out… you know. You want justice for other people but you let the legal system do it. You don't go out of line without a good reason. That's kind of-"

The boy was pouting slightly when his father still didn't see that he was there. Seeing the big, heartwarming smile slide away got to me. I don't want to be the reason that a child is unhappy that they can't see their daddy. I smiled softly at the child and pointed at Booth, then to him. His smile came back and he beamed, nodding enthusiastically.

I smiled and nodded back to him, before looking up at Booth. "Booth, really. I appreciate that you mean well, but someone else probably warrants your attention more than I do right now," I interrupted, giving him a half-apologetic, half-exasperated shrug to show that, by interrupting him, I really hadn't been trying to be rude or brush away his consideration. I nodded to the doors once I had his attention and Booth turned. His face lit up in a big grin once he saw the little boy.

He looked back to me briefly. "I'm not quite done with that yet," he warned, before taking off down the stairs and to the doors in a near sprint.

As the father and son spoke through earpieces, Booth knelt down to his child's height and pressed his palm against the glass. The little boy tapped at his father's hand for a moment before he looked back up at him and tried to cover it up with his own hand, which was obviously much too small. I smiled at the pair, even though they were too absorbed in each other to see. Feeling like I was invading in a private moment, I checked the page of my book, closed it up, and walked off of the platform.

While the father and child have their special holiday time, I can go read in the loft instead.


	28. The Man in the Fallout Shelter, Part T

** "****I ****_really _****don't think this is necessary."**

** "****Come on, sweetie. Where's your holiday spirit?"**

** "****It's in Cardiff, where the ****_Doctor Who _****Christmas special will be filmed during holiday this year."**

**I took small steps into Angela's office, due to the fact that the artist had threatened me into covering my eyes with my hands. She was trying to show me something that she'd done, but she wanted it to come as an all-at-once surprise, so I wasn't allowed to look until she said so.**

** "****What I don't get is how you can be a science fiction geek on the inside, but not have seen ****_Firefly._****"**

** "****Zach told you?" I asked, mildly surprised.**

** "****Yeah," Angela said. "He also said he took my advice and gave his condolences when you were sad. He really loves his ****_Firefly._****Oh, move a bit to the right or you'll accidently hit the bookshelf," the artist instructed helpfully.**

**I shuffled to the side, knowing that by now I should be near the hologram projector. "Can I uncover my eyes now?" I asked hopefully.**

** "****Yeah, sure. I guess I was pushing my luck, anyway." I let my hands fall from my face and my breath was snatched away. Angela had found a new way to use her holographic machine; a three-dimensional woven basket was lit up with sparkling yellow and orange lights. A golden bow twisted and dangled from the highest point of the arch of the handle. The basket was piled high with Easter eggs, designed to look as if they'd been painted. Sparkling silvery spirals and vivid neon colors made the computer simulation look much better than the kind that's bought in stores. "You like it?" Angela asked.**

** "****It's beautiful," I replied, and without thinking I reached out to try to touch it. The colors and designs were amazing and it seemed almost surreal, given the circumstances. Of course, my hand went right through it.**

** "****It's not done yet," Angela admitted. "I thought I could put up some lights, and then if I could get the right codec, I could transform it to an animation and use it on the monitors, like the fireplaces at dinner. And for variation, I could set up a color scheme recognition program…" Angela sighed. "You probably think it's stupid."**

** "****No, I don't," I denied honestly. "It's amazing. And besides, I'm sure everyone will appreciate it." The cheer and sentiment behind the hologram was what the Jeffersonian was missing for a holiday. Although nothing will be able to replace their children, in Booth and Goodman's case, it would make Easter a bit brighter. I stepped away from the mesmerizing Easter hologram and sat down on one of Angela's couches. "What were your plans?"**

**Angela sat down with me on the opposite end of the couch. "My dad and I get together somewhere quiet and have dinner and talk, just the two of us." She sighed. "Since I was a kid, getting some time alone with my dad was always difficult. What is it with you and holidays, anyway?" **

**I frowned softly at the sofa and picked at a loose seam with my nails, unwilling to look at Angela while I talked. There wasn't really a reason not to tell her; if she knows about the abuse, which is what I keep most guarded, then there's not a good excuse not to tell her about my most recent foster family without getting into my emotions. Ugh. "About a week before Christmas, they – the foster parents – were going to the store. They told Aaron and I – oh, Aaron was my foster brother. He was older than I was by a few years. He was nineteen when I was sixteen – that they'd be back in a few hours. They left before dinner and told us to order pizza.**

** "****By midnight, they still hadn't come back. Aaron called the police, but it hadn't been forty-eight hours, so they couldn't do anything. They offered to put us in custody until we had word from our parents, but since Aaron was legal, he said he'd take care of me, since he was legally my brother. Two days later, they still hadn't come back, and Aaron had started acting weirdly. He would send me to the store for something but give me way too much money, and then told me to keep the change for my savings account at the bank. And it was never just a few dollars. It was always a lot."**

**Angela was a good audience. She realized that it was a sore topic and that it was taking effort to tell her. She was quiet and attentive and didn't push.**

** "****A few days later I started noticing how much empty the house seemed, and not just because Aaron's parents were missing. I mean, I finished the laundry faster than normal because there wasn't as much to wash. Aaron's car magazines weren't lying around on the table anymore. His trophies from high school had disappeared from the display case. I thought he was going somewhere, so I went to look in his room to see if I could find suitcases. Instead I found a letter out on his desk." I took a deep breath. Although I'd probably never forgive him for abandoning me, Aaron had been the best foster sibling I'd had, and as such the majority of my anger came from the feeling of betrayal. "It was an acceptance letter from the army. Aaron had enlisted without having the decency to tell me. He was gone the next day. He left a note on the fridge and didn't even say goodbye. He left a cash stash so that I could provide for myself until I got a job." I left out the papers that he'd signed for me to get an apartment, since everyone still thinks I live at the family home. "The day he left was actually Christmas Eve. I was so angry with him I ignored the phone when he called on my birthday a couple days later."**

** "****Oh, sweetie," Angela breathed sympathetically. "That's horrible."**

** "****Excuse me…" Booth said, knocking his hand softly on Angela's door. He seemed saddened and subdued, making me wonder how long he'd been listening in. "We have Lionel's missing persons file."**

**I pushed myself up from the couch and started towards the door. "The basket is beautiful, Angela. It really is."**

* * *

><p><strong>I sat down beside Brennan on the catwalk up high, overlooking the main lab with the exam platform. I swung my legs out over the side and kicked slightly at the air. Although it was cool, I held on to the railing for good measure.<strong>

** "****Lionel Little was born May nineteenth, 1934, Tulsa, Oklahoma," Booth read from the missing persons' file. He was standing up and walking back and forth, pacing, while Brennan, Goodman, and I all lounged with our legs over the edge.**

** "****Twenty-four years old," Goodman hummed, quickly doing the math.**

** "****That fits the remains," Brennan nodded in acceptance.**

** "****According to the report lodged by his boss in January of 1960, Lionel Little worked as a lease inspector for Silver Cloud Petroleum out of Tulsa, Oklahoma." Booth added, and I realized what he was doing. To keep things calm and unconfused, he was handing things out fact by fact and letting Brennan and Goodman rake over them.**

** "****Basically, he was an accountant," Goodman simplified.**

** "****Yeah," Booth nodded. "And you know what? You were right about Lionel's coin collection. When Lionel vanished, so did most of his rather extensive coin collection." He waved the folder up in the air a bit. "That part was attached to the file."**

** "****Did the coins ever show up?" I asked curiously. If someone collects anything for long enough, then eventually, as the level of rarity increases, so does the monetary value of the collection. That could have easily been a motive.**

**Booth whistled and held up one of the pages so he could read the one under it. "Yeah. Through D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The sales were traced back to a Gill Adkins. Yep. He made out about eight thousand dollars selling those coins."**

** "****Adkins killed Lionel for a coin collection?" Brennan guessed incredulously. Her tone indicated she thought it was ridiculous.**

** "****Eight thousand dollars in 1958 translates to roughly sixty-four thousand dollars," Goodman said, raising his eyebrows at Brennan as if to say, ****_not so ridiculous now, is it?_**

** "****Not-Careful-Enough Lionel gets a young black girl pregnant, then sells his coin collection so he can move them to Paris and live together," I offered. "Say he offers the coins for sale to Adkins. Adkins decides it would be more of a profit for him to kill the coins' owner and sell them off himself." I made rational sense, but we couldn't prove it. I sighed. "It's really too bad we can't question people from nearing fifty years ago."**

** "****Oh!" Booth exclaimed, like he'd just remembered something important. "Also, the last person to see Lionel was a woman who cleaned his office – Ivy Gillespi."**

** "****What's the significance of that?" Goodman asked, looking up at Booth in confusion.**

**In reply, Booth passed down one of the letters in Lionel's suitcase to him. The yellowing parchment was curled and wrinkled and torn around the edges, but that was a given, considering how old it was. "Does this look like an ivy leaf to you?" Booth asked, pointing toward the bottom of the letter.**

** "****Ivy Gillespi," Goodman said, his eyes dulling as he realized what the signature drawing meant. "Race: Negro."**

** "****You have to find her!" I looked down over the first bar of railing. Looking off of the catwalk, Angela was standing underneath at such an angle that, if I so wanted, I could straighten my legs and make it look a little bit like my feet were on her shoulders. But I wouldn't do that. It's childish.**

** …**

**No. Resist the childish urges, Holly Kirkland!**

** "****Ivy," Angela elaborated when no one responded to her.**

**Goodman looked to me for a moment. I shrugged. ****_What's he want the abused kid to say?! That's a fantastic idea because Ivy's probably not at all emotionally damaged?! _****Goodman looked back down to Angela. "Ivy Gillespi may not even be alive, and if she is, this could be a reminder of an extremely painful time of her life. What would we accomplish?" He asked.**

** "****You have to find the girl, and tell her what you know," Angela insisted emphatically. She looked up to me and locked eyes with me and I was slightly bewildered. "Don't you see?" She implored. "You can give her the answer that you never got!"**

** "****Angela…" I started, unsure of how exactly I was going to finish.**

** "****I'm sorry, sweetie, but it's true," Angela persisted. I know she doesn't want to dredge up painful feelings, but that's exactly what she's doing. Her honesty and desperation was palpable. "You have a real chance here."**

** "****To say what?" Brennan asked with a scoff, taken aback by Angela's insistence.**

** "****Happy Easter, Ivy Gillespi. Your fiancé was murdered and your life was ruined, but hey, at least you get to know what happened to him?" I suggested with a slight flare in defensive attitude.**

** "****But don't you both wish that somebody had said that to you?" Angela looked between Brennan and I, searching for the answer that she had to know we would give.**

**I was unwilling to say it out loud. I really do try not to care, but I don't know what happened to Aaron or his parents, and they hadn't hurt me. They had tried to include me. At the very least, I could honestly say that I did want to know what had happened to that little family that had been taken apart.**

**Brennan said it for me, after a pause and a struggle to find words. "Yes."**

* * *

><p><strong>I stifled a long yawn and leaned back against the sofa, looking blearily at the clock. Eleven thirty. The dial tone rang in my ear again, jolting me back awake, and I jerked before getting up from the couch and pacing around. Can't fall asleep yet.<strong>

**Brennan and I have been spending the last couple of hours trying to track down Ivy Gillespi. So far we've searched phone books in paper and online and we've used a few other means of records.**

** "****_Good evening," _****someone picked up the phone.**

** "****Yes, hello," I said, making sure to tone down the motor mouth. When I get tired, I either talk too slow or too fast to be clearly understood. "Sir, I realize it's nearly midnight on the day before a federal holiday, but it's extremely important that I find a Miss Ivy Gillespi. I know that she was a cleaning lady at the Silver Cloud Petroleum in 1958 and 1959, but beyond that, I don't know…"**

**An hour passed and Brennan and I switched places. I took the computer and records and she took the human-over-telephone-interaction. "I wouldn't interrupt your holiday, except this is very, very important to a friend of mine. I don't want to take time from your family," Brennan said calmly and sincerely. "But I have extremely important news for Miss Gillespi regarding a loved one.**

**The first two hours of Easter, 2005 passed. "Do you have an address, or place of work, or anything?" I asked softly, careful not to wake up Angela, who was now dozing off on the couch.**

** "****I've made dozens of calls this evening in an effort to track this woman down. It's that important," Brennan stressed over the phone at three in the morning.**

**At five, I finally got a narrow result. "Assisted living?" I repeated for Brennan's benefit. "Is her last name still Gillespi?" Brennan opened a new tab on her computer browser and started narrowing down phone numbers to the assisted living homes in Maryland. "Yes… Happy Easter to you, too."**

**At six, we'd phoned every organization possible. It seemed like just our luck that the last one we called was the one we wanted. "Hello?" I asked, to make sure that the voice on the other end of the line wasn't just a silly machine. "Yes, I was wondering if you could tell me if you have any guests, first name Ivy, born in January of 1934. She'd be African American-" The cranky nagging of the woman on the other end of the line made me stop and roll my eyes before continuing. "Yes, I apologize, I should have started with Happy Easter."**

**And at seven, when our search had been going for nearly nine hours, Brennan put the receiver back on its cradle and hit the speakerphone button as she said, "Date of birth is January 21****st****, 1934. She's African American…"**

** "****_First name Ivy, surname Gillespi?" _****A calm, collected feminine voice at the other end asked.**

** "****Yes, Ivy," Brennan answered quickly. "Her name is still Gillespi?"**

** "****_Yes, her name has not changed. We can't put you through to her right now, but her granddaughter is just about to sign in to visit her. Would you like us to pass you over?"_**

** "****Oh, yes. If her granddaughter's right there, that would be wonderful," I said, blinking several times to take away the blur of the red digital clock on the desk. Staring at any clock for too long is never a good idea.**

** "****_Hello?"_****A feminine, but much softer, voice asked. ****"****_My name is Lisa Pierce. May I help you?"_**

**Brennan's shoulders sagged in visible relief and I could tell that she had been just as thrilled to finally conclude our project as I was. "Yes. Hello. I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan, and my assistant Holly Kirkland is on the line, too. We're from the Jeffersonian Institution in D.C.. We have information that might be very interesting to your grandmother."**

**I blinked at her words while she talked to Lisa, giving her a brief sentence on why she wanted to see Ivy. ****_My assistant? We're from? _****I smiled softly. ****_They're starting to get as used to me as I am to them._**

**I finished the phone call when it became clear that Lisa wanted to hang up and go speak to her grandmother. "We can be reached through the Medico-Legal lab here at the Jeffersonian. And please tell your grandmother Happy Easter."**

**Angela stood up slowly, stretching out her back and rising from the couch. "You found Ivy Gillespi," she stated, sounding relieved and proud. I nodded.**

** "****In an assisted living facility near Bethesda. We spoke to her granddaughter," Brennan added.**

**Angela smiled peacefully. "Thank you."**

** "****She might not get in touch with us," I warned, keeping to the side of caution.**

**Angela shook her head at me. "She will," she said, and her voice was so solid I understood that somehow, she just knew that Ivy would contact the Jeffersonian again.**

* * *

><p><strong> "<strong>**Okay, everybody," Angela said, holding up her computer tablet in anticipation. "Stand over here." She brought the squints to the holograph display and ordered them to close their eyes. I didn't bother, since I already knew what it was she was going to show them. Brennan and I stood near the back, prepared to slip out and catalogue the last items found on Not-Careful-Enough Lionel's person before officially closing the case.**

**Angela brought up the spectacular hologram of the Easter basket again and I grinned as everyone's breath was taken away. Up at the top of the simulation was an illusion of a string of neon lights that glowed softly, and the weave of the basket had been enhanced to a more complex design. For a moment, the room echoed with the sound of astonished applause before Booth, Goodman, Hodgins, and Brennan highly praised Angela. Hodgins and Zach shared a big hug. Zach seemed a little unsure about why he was hugging Hodgins, but he let Hodgins hug him anyway. I think it was Hodgins' way of making up to Zach for drinking alcohol during the autopsy, and for being so rude right after.**

**Brennan and I stayed for a moment. When the merriment started to die down, our eyes met and she nodded slightly before turning and walking silently back out of the room. I waited a moment before following, my eyes lingering for a moment on the fantastic hologram.**

* * *

><p><strong> "<strong>**I don't believe it," I said softly, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the situation. Brennan sat at her desk and I stood behind her, looking over her shoulder at the last item we'd found on Lionel. It had been a part of his coin collection; in a little coin pouch, it had remained safe, even through its owner's attack and murder.**

** "****I don't understand why not. We've been looking at it for a better part of five minutes," Brennan replied, slightly confused.**

** "****No, I mean… it's just surprising. That's what I meant by it."**

**Booth approached and stood just inside the doorway. He flipped his own coin in his hand without really thinking about it, occupying himself while he talked. "Look, Bones, here's the thing: what if a gift goes both ways? What's wrong with that?"**

** "****Come look at this," Brennan commanded, her voice still slightly dazed at what we found.**

**Booth walked over, closer to the desk, and looked down at the rust-colored coin. He looked back up at Brennan, unimpressed. "Yeah. It's a penny."**

** "****It's not just ****_a _****penny," I corrected, giving Booth a little glare for getting it so wrong. "It was one of the last things in Not-Careful-Enough Lionel's suit. It's a 1943 bronze one-cent piece."**

**Booth sighed and he was probably deciding to just ignore us, since we were being so weird. "Look, Bones, all I'm saying is that maybe the real gift is when you accept something with a little grace."**

**I have no idea what he's talking about. I guess I can assume that it's something that they argued about earlier on a catwalk. I rolled my eyes and picked up the penny from the desk. "Booth. No offense, but this penny is much more interesting than you are giving it credit for!"**

**Brennan reached up and carefully turned the monitor at an angle so that Booth could see it without a color glare. The enlarged picture on the screen was an exact match to the penny I held up. Brennan pointed at the penny. "Over a billion pennies were minted in 1943, most of them in steel to conserve copper for World War II. But a handful were struck in an old-style bronze planchette. Only about a dozen exist today."**

** "****Whoa," Booth said, shoving his hands in his pockets. He looked at the penny in a new light. "And this is one of them?"**

** "****Yes," Brennan nodded.**

** "****Huh." Booth reached out to see the coin. I pressed it into the palm of his hand and he held it up in the light, looking to see if there was anything special about it. "How much is it worth?"**

** "****Over a hundred thousand dollars," I said, crossing my arms and shaking my head. "Not-Careful-Enough Lionel didn't show Adkins the best part of his coin collection."**

** "****And so we can reasonably assume that when Adkins murdered him, he never knew that there was still a fortune in his pocket," Brennan concluded.**

**Booth carefully set the penny back down onto the yellowing paper pouch. "Well. It looked like Careful Lionel got the last laugh." He seemed pleased by this; I was a little happy, too. It was like Lionel was telling Adkins that murder is never okay, and he was taunting his own murderer for failing to reap all of the benefits of his death.**

**Goodman appeared in the doorway, none the wiser to our discovery. "Ready?" He asked. Without waiting for anyone to answer, he added, "It's time for our test results."**

** "****Well, I'm definitely curious as to whether or not I'll be needing acupuncture," I said wryly.**

* * *

><p><strong>I pushed my hair back over my shoulders and huffed, crossing my arms and watching the CDC. Wearing hazmat suits, three members of the CDC, including the official who had organized visitation hours, surrounded a cart with two computer monitors facing the quarantined group and a computer to the side. Zach and Hodgins were sitting on the bottom step of the lab platform, while Angela was standing and leaning against the railing on the second step. Booth and Brennan stood on one side of the platform, while I stood leaning against the side of the raised exam space on the other side of the stairs. Goodman was standing on the platform level, leaning over the railing in a totally safe way.<strong>

**The monitor beeped, cutting through the silence of the lab. No one had said anything, too apprehensive about the test results. Quickly, the top monitor went from black to completely solid stoplight-colored green.**

** "****Green! Green," Booth jumped as the color changed. He rubbed his hands together nervously. "Is that green as in "go," or green as in "stick a needle in your brain?""**

**I frowned over at him. "Congratulations, Booth. I've never associated the color green with surgery and death before."**

**The CDC official (I kind of wish I knew his name, just so I wouldn't sound so rude in my head) looked between the two of us with a look that I couldn't really decipher before he seemed to decide to ignore the strange interaction. After heaving a sharp sigh, he reached up to his head and lifted the visor and helmet from his head. "Happy Easter," he said with a relieved smile.**

**The lab's automatic doors unlocked with a buzz and a loud hiss, then slid open. The red light that had been on the motion sensor above it turned green. I smiled, relieved that no one would need to have an operation done on their brain for valley fever, and stayed back from the stampede of cheering masses rushing to leave the platform and go home.**

** "****Yes! We are out of here!" Hodgins whooped loudly, celebratory and drunk on giddiness. "Happy Easter, everyone!" He yelled, running out of the lab without a second thought. Goodman wasn't far behind him, although, unlike Hodgins, the archaeologist didn't sprint like his life depended on getting out of the facility within fifteen seconds. Angela picked up her purse from where it hung over the rail and set off in a fast speed-walk and Zach followed right behind him.**

**Once the herd of scientists was out of the way, the CDC official, looking a bit dazed by the sudden onslaught of running and cheering, wheeled a plain grey suitcase over to Brennan. "These are the clothes we took from everyone," he said briskly. "They've been treated and they're sterile. Completely safe. I was going to give them back before everyone left, but it looks like you three are the only ones that thought it was worth sticking around."**

** "****I've got nowhere to be, and I think we're expecting a visitor later," I explained. Brennan took the suitcase from the CDC man and laid it down on the ground, unzipping it and rummaging through the neatly folded clothes. She found her own sweater and draped it over her arm. I glanced at Booth and raised my eyebrows. "But you've got a kid, so I'm not sure why you're still here."**

** "****Holly!" Brennan exclaimed suddenly, her voice kind of happy. I looked back to her and smiled sincerely. She had closed the suitcase but was holding out my long-sleeved sweater. I jumped forward and lifted it from her hand excitedly and unfolded it, pulling it down over my head and pushing my arms through the sleeves. Although I have come to accept that the Jeffersonian scientists, unlike others that I've met, aren't going to judge me by my appearance and physical markings, the sweater was warm, comforting, and familiar.**

**Booth looked to the doors and then back to Brennan, his eyes darting between the two hesitantly. Brennan smiled softly at him and then motioned towards the door. "Go. Go have Easter," she ordered lightly.**

** "****Wish your little boy a good holiday for me," I requested softly, recalling the image of the adorable little child who had been so eager to see Booth.**

**Booth seemed to have made up his mind. "I'm at Wong Foo's if either of you decide you want company for Easter," he said as a goodbye. I nodded to show I heard, and if I'm completely honest, I may not want to completely disregard it. I mean, if he was willing to bring me on so many cases even when he doesn't have to bother me anymore, then maybe a quick hello on Easter wouldn't hurt.**

** "****Happy Easter," Booth said, waving at us. Brennan nodded at him as he turned and walked off at a casual, unhurried pace to the doors, intent on spending part of the holiday with his son. ****_When I met him, I'd never have pegged him for the father of a little child._**

**Brennan zipped up the plain suitcase and stood up. "I'll take this up to Angela's office," she told me. "If you want to go make sure the equipment in the lab's secured, I'll give you my security card again."**

** "****Excuse me?"**

**Brennan and I both looked away from each other and to the women entering the open doors of the lab. One of them was young, maybe a year or two older than me, with black hair and a soft green shirt with jeans. She was helping an elderly woman, also African American, walk. ****_I hope she's not having trouble walking because she got caught in the stampede of scientists,_****I thought to myself.**

** "****Hi," the younger one began again, slightly unsure of herself. "My name is Lisa Pierce, and this is my grandmother, Ivy Gillespi. We were called by a Dr. Brennan and her assistant, a Miss Kirkland."**

**My eyes widened. I guess Angela was right – Ivy really had come, and now Brennan and I could give her answers which anyone would deserve. I rushed forward from the platform. "Yes, right, of course. Please just come with me. I'll take you to Dr. Brennan's office. She'll be with us in a moment. I'm really glad you came, Miss Gillespi. We have very, very important information for you."**

* * *

><p><strong>Ivy Gillespi sat on the couch, holding the wedding ring from Lionel Little's half-degraded jacket in her hands carefully, like it was a most precious treasure. Lisa sat on a chair across from her, keeping a nice posture even though her grandmother, Brennan, and I were the only people in the room. Brennan and I were standing – I don't know about Brennan, but my excitement was buzzing too much for me to sit still, so I'd opted to stay on my feet, instead.<strong>

** "****I gave birth to a half-white child in Oklahoma, 1960. Lionel's daughter… I raised her myself, no education. Got her to college," Ivy reminisced proudly. Brennan and I shared a look of pride for ourselves. Although Ivy definitely seemed sad about Lionel's fate, she was content. "She died eight years ago."**

** "****Condolences," I said without thinking, bowing my head for a moment in respect.**

** "****And grandma raised me after that," Lisa added, giving her grandmother a soft smile while Ivy turned the wedding ring over in her hands. Lisa obviously admired her grandmother for her endurance in a world that was socially inadequate for her situation.**

** "****Her mother was a nurse, and Lisa's going to be a doctor," Ivy explained proudly, fondly gazing at Lisa, who shrunk back slightly.**

** "****Grandma, I can't afford college," she told her grandmother quietly, looking down uncomfortably. ****_Lisa, I highly doubt that will be a problem for much longer._**

**Ivy shook her head sadly down at the wedding ring like she didn't want to believe what Lisa said. She changed the subject and looked up at Brennan and I again. "So Lionel was murdered?"**

** "****In 1959, yes," Brennan edified, nodding solemnly. "By a man named Gill Adkins."**

** "****And you can figure that out… all this time later?" Ivy peered up at us inquisitively, confused and awed at the same time, and I had to admit that she was taking this a lot better than I would. If I'd found out that my foster family had abandoned me because they'd been kidnapped and killed on their way to the store, my emotions would probably do a flip and my temper would be ten times worse.**

**I nodded slightly, but felt she deserved a bit more detail. "Well, we can't prove anything concrete, but evidence and circumstances point to the culprit. We know he was killed for his coin collection, which he'd been intending to sell so that he had money to support his family." I swallowed. ****_He was killed trying to provide for the family that never got to know him._**

** "****He had these." Brennan handed Ivy the now-catalogued ticket envelope.**

**Ivy unfolded the papers with shaky hands and her voice shook. "Tickets to Paris?"**

** "****Grandma, isn't that what he promised you?" Lisa looked up from the tickets to her grandmother's face, seemingly awed by the plane tickets. "A life in France?"**

**Ivy gasped and held the tickets delicately to her chest. "I thought the worst of him," she berated herself lightly.**

** "****Thank you, Dr. Brennan and Miss Kirkland," Lisa said for her grandmother, looking up with a genuine smile to Brennan and I in turn. "We really can't thank you enough."**

**Brennan looked at her desk and watched as she gently pushed the coin in its pouch off of the side of the table, catching it in her palm. "I have something even better," she announced, returning to Lisa's side and letting the girl take the slip from her hand.**

**Lisa dumped the pouch upside down and the penny fell into her hands. Unamused, Lisa looked up to Brennan and said, with a completely straight face, "It's a penny."**

** "****What could be better?" Ivy asked, her eyes closed as she held the documents up and breathed deeply, trying not to cry. "You've given me back my life."**

**I clapped my hand on the back of Lisa's chair. "You know, there's something really special about that penny," I said conversationally. "Back when it was made, just before the second World War, copper was being preserved, and only a few coins were minted with materials that could be used for war stocks. Today, only a handful of coins like that exist…"**

* * *

><p><strong>Brennan and I pulled up chairs at the bar of Wong Foo's Chinese restaurant. Booth really didn't seem surprised when suddenly the chair next to him was occupied by his seventeen-year-old consultant, and on the other side of me was his partner. Sid approached us on the other side of the bar, holding a champagne glass already full of burgundy liquid and a normal glass with ice water. He sat them down in front of Brennan and I respectively.<strong>

** "****Drinks," Brennan nodded in acknowledgement, raising her glass up.**

** "****Ah, yes. Holiday spirits come in many a guise," Sid said wisely, pouring himself a shot and holding it up by the narrow handle.**

** "****Cheers," Booth said with a groan, and I raised my water and we all clinked our glasses, and for once I wasn't questioning my right to be here with them in their after-work-celebration place.**

**Sid went off further down the bar to take care of some other customer, while Brennan leaned forward and I leaned back so that she could see Booth around me. "Ivy Gillespi came to the lab after you left, with her granddaughter." Booth smiled out across the bar and didn't say anything. He wasn't surprised. Brennan seemed curious that he wasn't asking. "Don't you want to know what happened?" She ventured.**

** "****I know what happened," Booth said knowingly, looking down the bar at Brennan and I. His voice was low but not like he was keeping a secret, and he was matter-of-fact and calm. "You told her about Careful Lionel. You showed her the letters, and the tickets. She cried, but you'd made her happy."**

**I took a long drink of ice cold water and set the glass on the countertop, a ring of water growing underneath as the condensation ran down the sides of the glass. "Not to mention we gave her a penny worth a small fortune," I reminded him, enjoying the cool water on my throat. Bottled water is okay, but the CDC never thought to gift us with ice.**

** "****She won't care about that today," Booth murmured. "You just gave somebody the best holiday gift they could ever get. Who's the Easter Bunny now?" Booth asked with a playful wink.**

** "****Stop," I groaned, taking another drink and half wishing that it was alcohol.**

** "****_Daddy!_****" ****A high-pitched little voice squealed. A little ball of blonde and dark green came running down the bar aisle and skidded to a stop, stumbling slightly over his own feet. The soft chocolate eyes looked up at Booth pleadingly from under a dirty-blonde-colored fringe. "Daddy!"**

**Booth picked up the child with both hands and turned him around, propping him up in his lap. He kissed the little blonde-haired boy's cheek and said, "Can you say 'Happy Easter' to my friends?"**

** "****Happy Easter!" He repeated with a huge smile, waving at Brennan and I excitedly.**

**I smiled back genuinely at the child and waved back.**

**Booth's son suddenly beamed in recognition and pointed at me wildly. "Thank you for getting my daddy for me!" He said, reaching out for me with both hands. Booth raised his eyebrows at me when he saw his son's request and I shrugged. He's just a child, and he's Booth's kid, so what the hell? It'll be just like when I held Shawn Cook, except a bit less nerve-wracking.**

**Booth lifted his kid off of his lap and held him out. I leaned back in my chair and helped Booth pass him over to my lap, where the boy's arms found their way up to my shoulders to hang on while he smiled up at me. His legs swung lazily over the edge of the chair. "Parker, this is Holly," Booth introduced, reaching for his phone in his pocket.**

** "****Hi Holly!" Parker exclaimed sweetly. "My name's Parker! I'm four!" He held up four fingers proudly.**

** "****Wow!" I played along, pretending to be impressed. It's good for children to have their morale boosted. "You're that young? I could've sworn you were at least six!" I lied with a smile, supporting Parker with a hand on his side to keep him from moving around too much.**

** "****No," Parker sighed, looking disappointed, but then he grinned again and puffed out his chest. "I look a lot older than I am, because I'm big and strong like my dad!"**

**I tickled his stomach and he had to let go of the air he was holding to laugh. "Oh, really?" I teased. "I think that at this rate, you'll be much bigger and stronger than your dad!" I smirked at Booth while Parker giggled at Booth's fake offended expression.**

** "****Yeah, yeah," Booth grumbled, holding up his phone at the two of us.**

** "****Are you taking a picture?" I asked incredulously.**

** "****Yes, I am," Booth grinned at me over his phone. "My favorite child with my favorite junior agent-squint!"**

**Instead of being affected by the compliment, I analyzed that and raised my eyebrows. "Aren't I your ****_only _****junior agent-squint?"**

** "****That is absolutely beside the point," Booth said dismissively, waving my deflection off with one hand. "Now smile for the camera!"**

** "****Cheeeeeeeeeese!" Parker dragged out the vowel and smiled as widely as he could, showing off his photogenic abilities. I smiled slightly despite myself, even though I don't particularly like having people take my picture. After Parker heard the click of the phone camera, he reached out with one hand for the phone. "I wanna see!"**

** "****Here you go, bud," Booth said, turning the phone around and handing it to Parker. I looked at the screen, curious of how the picture turned out. Parker was smiling so largely I almost worried his cheeks would be sore later, but his big brown eyes reflected the lights of the bar in a way that suggested that he wasn't at all concerned with later issues. Parker had one hand on my shoulder to keep himself steady, and his legs were in mid-swing. Parker didn't even come up to my chin, even while I was sitting down with him on my legs, and my hair (which was nearly back to its normal ebony color) fell over my shoulder and became a contrast for Parker's blonde. I was softly smiling at the camera, and I looked much happier with my temporary co-worker's four-year-old son on my lap than I ever had in any picture (barring the expression I'd had when Aaron had managed to make a complete fool of himself on tape so that I could watch it over and over again and use it as leverage over him).**

** "****Awesome!" Parker judged with the criticism of a four-year-old. "That should go in my scrapbook for Easter!"**

**I really wasn't sure how I felt about a four-year-old having a picture of he and I in a scrapbook when not only did the four-year-old barely know me, but when his father and I probably aren't going to get any closer than reluctantly bonding over histories of drunken, neglectful, and cruel parentage, but I didn't speak up against it. Instead I smiled at Parker while he talked happily to Brennan about what he did in school on Friday to celebrate the Easter weekend.**


	29. The Woman at the Airport, Part One

A couple of hours before lunch on Monday morning, I washed over the bar top with a rag. Andy was sitting on a stool on the customers' side of the bar, talking about God knows what (I stopped paying attention five minutes ago) while I got ready for the lunch rush, when college professors and day workers got their hour-long breaks and popped in for some alcohol that they would later deny they'd had.

"…is, you haven't worked for an entire three days at once ever since you met those people." I tuned back in to the KFRAndy Radio Show when I heard the pronoun "you" again. The radio show joke thing was barely an exaggeration; when someone doesn't tell him to shut up, Andy talks incessantly. "And the papers I got today, they said you were excused because of a federal quarantine."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I would've called, but I was busy being tested for valley fever," I said offhandedly, before I realized how weird it was to say that sort of thing so casually.

"You what?" Andy asked again, before shaking his head and hands violently. "No, no, no. Don't tell me. I get that you're working big important FBI cases, but when are you going to quit and come back to your job? You know, reality?"

I sighed loudly. I really don't like having this conversation with Andy, of all people. The door opened with a soft squeak and my lips quirked upwards slightly at the familiar suited figure walking in and up to the bar. "Maybe when you get arrested, I'll take a break, because then I won't have to deal with you," I muttered under my breath.

"What was that?" Andy asked, turning his ear to me curiously.

"Nothing of importance."

Booth let his hand land solidly on Andy's shoulder and my boss just about fell out of his chair, yelling out in surprise. I smirked as Andy turned to see Booth and nearly had a heart attack. "Hey, we don't have any drugs or anything, and we only sell to people of age, okay? We check for ID!" Andy justified desperately, frightened of Booth. I rolled my eyes.

"I'm not interested in your alcohol sales," Booth said, reflecting my thoughts. "I'm here to borrow your barmaid." He gave Andy an annoyed look.

For a moment, Andy looked between Booth and I in confusion, then realization, then disappointment (in me, I presume). "Oh. You want Holly again, right? What is it, Agent…?"

"_Special _Agent Booth," Booth corrected, emphasizing his correct title. "I do want to take Holly with me for a while, and being as she's being hired by the FBI, you can just expect to have her back when we're done with her and in the meantime, be prepared to get her her paycheck at the normal time, thanks." Booth decided that Andy was scared enough and he nodded to the "EMPLOYEES ONLY" door back behind the bar. "Go on. FBI confidentiality," he prompted.

Andy didn't really have a choice. With his head down, he let his arms slide from the table as he forced his body to move off the chair and around the bar. He moved back behind the display and storage and to the door, and slipped through it, letting it swing shut behind him.

"He's irritated that I've not been around to keep Jeff from sneaking the alcohol at break time," I guessed. "What's up with you this time, Booth?"

Booth took Andy's seat and made himself at home. He swung his arm up onto the table and propped his heels up against the support of the stool. "Holly, what would you say if I invited you to go to LA with Bones and I?"

I raised my eyebrows. Was this some kind of joke? I played along anyway. It's not like he would come here for no reason. "I would say that that would be lovely, but it's not going to happen, so was there a point to that question?"

Booth groaned and covered his face with his hands for a moment. _Did I miss something obvious again? _I wondered to myself. Booth sat up again. "Holly, I'm inviting you to go with Bones and me to Los Angeles for a case!" He did a happy little jig from the stool. I opened my mouth to speak, but he raised a finger up to stop me. "And before you ask, I've already got it covered. The FBI's booked rooms for Bones and I, so you can bunk with her, at a hotel right in the middle of the city! Meals and necessary store trips can be charged to the FBI's tab, so it's pretty much no money out of your pocket to go to another big city that is across the country to solve another murder!"

I let go of the rag and leaned forward so far that my elbows touched the bar top and I balanced myself like that, with my forearms pressing against the counter. _Los Angeles? No expenses? Murder investigation? Hm. That's pretty much already answered itself. _"Alright," I said slowly. "When do we leave?"

"Now!" Booth jumped up from his chair and grinned hugely at me. He made a big 'come on' motion with his hand. "Bones is waiting outside in the car! Our flight leaves in an hour!"

"So I don't have time to go get packed?" I stated bluntly, reminding him of that little detail.

"Why do you always find fault in my plans?" Booth complained. "Didn't you hear me? _Meals and necessary store trips can be charged to the FBI's tab. _You can just go to the LA mall for things you need!"

"And what about plane tickets?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "You're not that great of a vacation planner if you don't account for these things."

"Already booked!" Booth crowed, and then motioned for me to hurry and pantomimed running. "So come on, what are you waiting for? "I knew you'd want to come, so I had the FBI get yours when I scheduled Bones's."

"You couldn't have known for sure that I'd be up for it!" I argued, coming the long way around the employee's entrance to the back of the bar.

Booth gave me this look of amusement and raised his eyebrows in a challenge. "Or can I?" He asked. "Bones is waiting in the car," he added, before I could tell him that no, he couldn't have known my response for certain. "Let's go live in Los Angeles!" He cried, throwing his hands up in the air above his head while he walked down the aisle back to the door. _I bet he has absolutely no idea how ridiculous he looks doing that._

* * *

><p>Three hours later, I was in Los Angeles, California, riding in the back of a black convertible mustang with the roof down, wearing the five-dollar blue plastic sunglasses from Walmart and singing along with Carrie Underwood on the radio. <em>Oh, yeah. This totally beats working in the bar.<em>

The sun was out and the clouds were scarce, but those that were there were white and fluffy. Palm trees provided fleeting shade along the local streets from where they'd been planted on the median dividing the traffic. So far, the most colors I've seen are green and orange. The tall buildings reached into the sky and cast large shadows over their smaller neighbors, and I have to say, it's pretty damn awesome to be in Los Angeles.

Brennan rode shotgun, her arm resting just inside the car and her window rolled all the way down. The wind whipped through her hair, which was the reason that both of us had our hair up in ponytails. She had on plain sunglasses that she'd bought from the sunglasses aisle at Walmart, while Booth took my lead and got silly kids' sunglasses, except his were a bright orange. His window was completely rolled down, too, and he was driving.

As _Before He Cheats_ ended and the radio station started an advertisement for a cinema film, Brennan frowned and looked to Booth, voicing her thoughts candidly. "This car doesn't feel very FBI-y."

Booth stopped smiling and he looked to Brennan indignantly. "Bones, this is a 1966 mustang! It's a classic! What goes better than that with the FBI?"

I leaned forward as best as I could with my seatbelt fighting against me. I set my arms on both of the adults' seats and looked to Booth curiously, bringing up what I'd noticed earlier at the car dealership. "How come you made the dealer write "sedan" under "model" on the rental agreement?" Brennan looked at me in shock and I nodded, and she looked around me to glare at Booth.

Booth tried to turn the conversation around. "Come on. We're in California!" He took his eyes off of the road for a minute and pointed at a tree. "Look at the palm trees!" He looked back to the road again and his hand moved back to the steering wheel. "We don't see a lot of those in D.C.."

Brennan huffed and leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms. I thought that that would be the end of the argument, but a minute later, Brennan looked over to Booth again. "You know, I'd like to drive sometimes."

Booth pretended not to have heard her. "Our contact out here is Special Agent Trisha Finn."

"I'm an excellent driver," Brennan told him, not willing to drop the subject as quickly as he was.

Booth couldn't ignore her for a second time without starting a fight. He scoffed lightly, not wanting to give up the driving rights of the car. "Okay, Rain Man."

"I don't know what that means," Brennan said, slightly confused.

"I am always going to drive." Booth stated simply and looked over at her for as long as he could without risking a car accident. "You know that, right? Me behind the wheel and you over there on the grandma side."

Brennan scowled at Booth for a moment before the frown slid away. Instead she looked out the window casually. "I'm not above telling Deputy Director Cullen what kind of car you rented." She said, her voice completely even.

And so, five minutes later, it was the same exact scene, except Brennan was behind the wheel while Booth was busy pouting with his arms crossed in the backseat of the car while I lounged shotgun. Thumbs-up for women commandeering the car!

"Do you want to drive on the way to the hotel?" Brennan offered to me, looking back and forth between the road and I.

"Nah. I don't have a license," I said, waving my hand lazily. "I know how, but it's not legal, so it's not a good idea."

Booth jumped at this and leaned forward again, putting his arms on the side of the front seats the same as I had. "Whoa. You're a seventeen-year-old without a license? You do realize that you can get one, don't you?"

I rolled my eyes and resisted the urge to bop his nose to get him to go back to the backseat. _Hey, if he's close enough for me to do it, then it's his fault. _"Of course I do. I had a permit, but then I changed foster homes. Anyway, it's not like I have a car to drive."

"Well that's what we've got to do while we're here!" Booth declared. I could hear the excitement in his tone. "Get the junior agent-squint a driver's license! There's always those times when you have to wait for a warrant or something."

I bit the inside of my cheek, looking up at the sky. I refrained from reminding Booth that registration for a license costs money, because he still thinks that I'm living off of funds from my foster family (who may or may not all be dead or living happily in Venice. Who knows?). _Well, I guess I'm getting a license. What the hell, it's Los Angeles._

* * *

><p>I took my sunglasses off and squinted against the brightness that I'd grown unaccustomed to. I folded them up and hung them off of my shirt, looking around the airstrip. A plane flew overhead, close enough for us to have to wait for it to pass in order to hear each other talk. Los Angeles has a great cityscape, but the airport is out in the more desert-like area.<p>

I looked over to Special Agent Trisha Finn as Brennan looked around and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. _I'm with you. I miss the car's air conditioner. _Finn was in her twenties and she had pretty blonde hair that was slightly curly. Despite that Booth was trying to be professional and was wearing his suit, Finn was apparently more used to adapting to the heat, and she wore slacks and a short-sleeved blouse instead.

"Agent Finn, why was the body removed from the crime scene?" Brennan asked, sounding upset.

"Call me Trisha, Dr. Brennan." Trisha pulled a rolled-up map from her brown shoulder bag. "The body was removed because parts were visible to arriving flights." She unrolled it and passed it to Brennan. I walked closer to the anthropologist to see the map. It was basically a tourist's guide to the airport and the immediate surrounding area, but out by the airstrips and a bit out into the desert were several orange points. "Here's a map of the crime scene with a legend. Now there's a marked cone at the location of each body part, and we have photographs that correspond to each cone."

I looked to Trisha inquisitively, recognizing the method. "Is that protocol, or did you use that method because it's in Dr. Brennan's most recent book?"

Booth seemed kind of proud. "She got that method from me," he said, pointing at Brennan and then himself.

Brennan seemed to have lost interest in the side conversation. She looked from the map up and around us. "This is not a dismemberment," she stated clearly and firmly.

"Are you sure, Bones?" Booth asked uncertainly. "I mean, this is Los Angeles. You know, they're pretty showy."

"That's nice. Stereotyping body dumps by the city in which they occur," I said, rolling my eyes slightly. I observed the map critically. I had to agree with Brennan; it probably wasn't dismemberment. The body parts had been so many and so randomly scattered, it seemed more like scavenging by big animals than a body dump.

"Is it possible that the body parts were ground up in a landing gear, then dumped when the airplane landed?" Trisha suggested.

"The dispersal rate is wrong," Brennan stated, disregarding the theory. "It looks to me like the body was pulled apart by a pack of dogs." I mentally applauded myself. _Way to go, Holly!_

Trisha sighed. "More likely coyotes."

"Coyotes at an airport?" I asked, surprised. "Really? That happens?"

"We've got coyotes everywhere, Miss…?" Trisha trailed off, and I remembered that I hadn't actually introduced myself. _Well done, Kirkland. Great job._

"Kirkland," I finished for her, and waved slightly. "Hello. Holly Kirkland. I'm Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth's consultant from D.C.."

"I'd like to see the remains now," Brennan announced, interrupting the conversation. To be fair, she didn't have to give us any time at all for it, but she gave us a minute, anyway. And besides, a dead person is probably more important than coyotes in Los Angeles.

* * *

><p>Los Angeles's police department provided us with a nice lab and the basic equipment that Brennan and I would need to do basis evaluations of the remains of the person who had been taken apart and scattered across the airfield. The body pieces were lain out in as close to anatomical order as we could get, but there was still a bit of sinew and tissue clinging to some of the remains. Trisha looked a little green and Booth seemed uneasy, even though I'd have thought he'd be getting used to it by now. Brennan and I were pretty much unaffected, and we were wearing latex gloves and ready to work.<p>

"I need all the dirt, silt, bits, and pieces collected with the body parts sent back to the Jeffersonian immediately," Brennan stated, knowing that either Booth or Trisha would make sure that happened.

"You know what I like?" Booth asked, although no one really seemed inclined to answer, so he answered the question himself. "When there's no flesh on the bones. It's just a… personal preference."

Brennan picked up a severed humorous with blackened muscle tissue still clinging to it. I had to admit, I'd been slightly hungry a minute ago, but now it's gone. Like, wiped from existence. "There's not much left, anyway," Brennan said, as if to make Booth realize that it wasn't that bad.

Trisha took a single look at the severed arm that Brennan held and took a very sharp breath. "Ew," she muttered, raising her hand to the side of her face to block it away. "Dr. Brennan, as a screenplay writer myself, I'd be happy to help you in any way I can with regard to your movie," she offered, sounding very hopeful."

"Excuse me?" Brennan asked, looking up from the humorous, caught off-guard.

I gave Trisha a long look. "Really? Someone's been killed and their body torn apart by coyotes, and you're thinking about a screenplay?"

"Well, it's just that someone told me they're thinking of making your book into a movie," Trisha stammered, a bit flustered now that she'd been called on her priorities. Brennan seemed sort of distant, like she was only half paying attention to the blonde agent.

"Say something, Bones!" Booth urged.

Brennan blinked and shook her head to herself a little bit. "Well, all I know is that I'm supposed to meet some big movie producer while I'm here, if I have time. Which I probably won't," she was quick to add. "Does the pathologist need any further access to the remaining soft tissue?"

Trisha seemed surprised by how quickly Brennan could jump from topic to topic. "Uh, no. He got everything out of it that he could." She reverted back to her own interests. Brennan set the humorous down and lifted the cranium, turning it around delicately. "So, my own screenplay is about this FBI agent who finds herself on the trail of the former boyfriend-" She gagged as Brennan peeled away the remaining skin tissue from the cheek of the cranium. "Oh, uh, God!" She looked like she was about to be sick.

"It's alright if you have to leave," I said, not sure whether to be sympathetic or relieved that she couldn't deal with it. I mean, if she's gone, at least I don't have to listen to her talk about screenplays anymore.

Trisha took my offer to heart and walked across the room and out the door as fast as she could, covering her mouth with her hand. I sighed and shook my head.

Brennan stopped removing soft tissue and held the cranium up at eye level, studying it very closely. "This is not good," she announced. I moved around to her side of the table to see what she'd found on the bones and I cringed.

"Dear God," I voiced my opinion with a bit more horror than maybe I needed to. "This is really very not good!"

"Yeah, thanks for that insight," Booth said, rolling his eyes and looking pointedly at the dead body on the table.

"No," Brennan disagreed, running her gloved fingertips along the side of the cranium. "I mean, the architecture of the skull has been radically altered."

Booth seemed disturbed by this sentence, although he took the chance and guessed, "You mean, by rotting and being eaten by coyotes and having the face ripped off by you?"

I shook my head, my ponytail rubbing over the back of my neck. "No. I think that whoever this was had… a _lot _of plastic surgery done on them."

Brennan looked to me and nodded in agreement, but she was still frowning because of the unpleasant discovery. "The cranium is largely mutilated. I'm not sure I'll be able to tell who this was."

The three of us looked around each other, unsettled. Booth had a sort of 'uh oh' look on his ace. Brennan couldn't seem to put the cranium back down on the table, both abhorred and fascinated by all of the remodeling and scarring done to the bone. If I hadn't been wearing gloves for the examination, I would have covered my face with my hands. _Who would do that to themselves? Mutilate their appearance so much that not even their bones can give their identity?_

* * *

><p>The rest of that day had consisted of familiarizing ourselves with the city. To Brennan, that meant buying a map and studying it. To Booth, it meant taking us everywhere in Los Angeles we could possibly need to go to. We'd gone to a mall and while I'd gotten my necessities at a chain store, Booth had looked in a toy store for Parker and Brennan had gotten herself another book to read in her spare time, having finished her other one on the plane.<p>

Then instead of letting us just eat there, Booth made us eat ice cream in the food court while he went to check out a registry for me to get a license. I was surprised that he was serious about getting me licensed, but it appeared that he really was. So while he was out making an appointment for me to register and be evaluated, as well as for the company to retrieve my records from my learner's permit from the legal system (it hadn't been revoked because of bad driving; it had been rendered useless when another foster family changed my last name again, and then hadn't let me go renew it), Brennan and I were being forced to eat Neapolitan ice cream while looking through tacky fashion magazines, just for the lack of anything else to do.

When Booth got back, he drove us to a fancy LA restaurant, where he made Brennan and I have dinner with him. ("Would it really kill you to eat at a nice, local restaurant? That's what tourism is about, Bones!" "But we're not tourists, we're crime-solving partners that came down here to solve a murder." "But we're also tourists until tomorrow at seven in the morning!")

After that, we got to go back to the hotel. It was lavish and four- or five-star, but I guess that's a good thing about the Jeffersonian and FBI paying for our trip. We had a pool on the roof and Brennan and I shared a room with Booth just across the hall. We set our alarms for six in the morning and from there, we listened to Booth complain about not being tourists anymore until he got coffee from the Starbucks in the lobby.

The monitor in the morgue lab was successfully set up. Brennan accepted the incoming Skype call on her computer, which was hooked to the large screen, and after a minute, the pixilation fixed itself and there was a clear picture of Zach on the screen. Brennan studied the bones while I adjusted the audio link. Finally finding the volume controls, I gave Brennan a thumbs-up.

"Are you getting the feed, Zach?" Brennan asked.

Zach crossed his hands behind his back and looked straight at the webcam, so it seemed like, even though he wasn't looking at me, I almost felt like it. "_Yes, Dr. Brennan. I'm looking at the x-rays you beamed me."_

"I'm going to have the bones cleaned, but there are still vestiges of flesh," Brennan continued, her hands resting on the edge of the exam table while she focused on talking with Zach.

"_Hodgins got the clothing remnants and silt this morning," _Zach put in.

"Are you there, Ange?" Brennan asks, dismissing Zach for the moment.

Angela pulled Zach out of the way of her computer and stood in front of the webcam, smiling through the computers with her control pad against her side. "_Is it sunny, sweetie?" _Angela gave Brennan her charming smile. I noticed that we were going with the Los Angeles look today, even though she wasn't actually with us. The makeup and floral blouse just seemed like it had come out of one of the magazines Brennan and I had looked through out of boredom. "_Come on. Tell me it's sunny!"_

I walked back into view of the monitor, satisfied with the volume, and picked up a pair of gloves from the little glove box on the table. I blew into one of them, stretching out the blue latex, and then replied to Angela, "Oh, it is sunny, alright. It is so sunny that I nearly died of heat stroke at the crime scene yesterday." Okay, so maybe that was a _slight _exaggeration, but whatever. Who's counting?

"_Holly?" _Angela seemed taken by surprise. "_Sweetie, I didn't know you were going to LA with them!" _She looked back to Brennan with her hands on her hips, almost like a scolding mother. "_Bren, why didn't you tell me that you were taking Holly?"_

"_Holly's there?" _Zach's voice asked suddenly, and he pushed his way back into the frame. He stepped in front of Angela curiously.

I waved at him through the webcam. "Hi, Zach."

Angela thought that that was enough proof for Zach, and she pushed him away again so that she had the screen to herself. "_You said you sent the entire skull. Do you want a reconstruction?" _Instead of sending all of the remains, we'd just sent the skull, so that Angela could help us with identity and Brennan and I would still have something to work with.

"If you can," Brennan said, sounding hesitant.

"_If I can?" _Angela repeated, sounding offended as she overly accented her words. "_Have I ever failed you?"_

"This one's different," Brennan said, sounding very distressed just by remembering the mutilations. "You'll see what I mean when you get it. Zach?" She called.

Zach pushed his way back in front of Angela, who looked disgruntled as she was blocked again. "_Here, Dr. Brennan!"_

"I make this a young woman," Brennan prompted her intern.

"_Early twenties, from the look of the x-rays," _Zach promptly replied, smiling slightly in pride.

"Cause of death?" I asked, not necessarily trying to come off as though I were quizzing him. I just wanted to know what he thought.

"_I see evidence of stabbing," _Zach said with a slight grimace. I couldn't blame him; of all causes of death, I think gunshot would be my most preferred, just because it's fast. I can't stand the thought of being alive with a knife in my stomach or something. If humans were meant to have metal twisting up their insides, then it wouldn't be a deadly procedure. "_One hit to the sternum, two to the pistoli cartilages."_

"So she was stabbed by someone standing in front of her," I nodded to myself. "Which means it probably wasn't a blitz attack."

"Is that relevant?" Brennan asked, looking to me with her eyebrows raised.

I held out my hands in a half-shrug. "Well, Booth will certainly think so. It means that she probably saw the attack coming, which also means that she might have known her killer."

Brennan nodded her head slightly and I knew that she was acknowledging the logic in the theory. "Estimated time of death?"

"_Degradation of the remains suggests the body was left out in the open between a week and ten days. The marks on the bones suggest carnivorous feeding beyond insects, birds, and rodents." _Zach said.

"Coyotes," Brennan said simply as an explanation.

Zach was surprised. "_They have coyotes?"_

"Welcome to Los Angeles," I chuckled. "We've got beaches, alcohol, swimsuit models, and wild animals strong enough to tear you apart when you die."

"_That explains the dispersal of the remains," _Zach stated mildly. "_A pack of coyotes finds the body, pulls it apart, and spreads out to eat in solitude."_

"The teeth are veneered," Brennan said, slightly confused.

"_The jaw has been broken and reset, same with the right leg. Have you seen any movie stars yet?"_

"No. Why?" Brennan asked, now definitely confused by the question.

Zach shrugged halfheartedly. "_Apparently, it's a contest when you go to LA in which the winner is the person who sees the most celebrities."_

I made the two-fingered peace sign with my hand and flashed it to the webcam for Angela and Zach to see. "I'll keep an eye out for James Roday, Matthew Gubler, and Cary Elwes, in that case."

"_I don't know who they are," _Zach admitted.

Angela rolled her eyes fondly at Zach's obliviousness, and I told him who they were. "They're all actors. James Roday plays Shawn Spencer in _Psych_, Matthew Gubler plays Spencer Reid in _Criminal Minds_, and Cary Elwes played Westley in _The Princess Bride_."

"_Please tell me that those mean something to you," _Angela half pleaded with Zach.

Zach frowned. "_I'll go google them," _he said, before walking out of the screen.

Angela watched him until he left her office, and then looked back to the webcam she was using to talk to us. "_You do have a whole skull, right?"_

"Yes," Brennan answered with a quick nod.

"_So why is this going to be so difficult?" _Angela asked with a worried frown, trying again to get information about the skull and why reconstruction might be difficult. She tapped her control pad's stylus against her opposite wrist.

Brennan dodged around the question again. She was clearly unnerved by the prospect of having so much surgery done that it mutilated bones. I understand that – I'm disturbed by it, too. I get caring about looks, and wanting pretty clothes and shiny hair. I can even understand why people strive to change their appearance – losing weight, using cosmetics, et cetera. What I can't understand is why people would try to change their basic architecture. I mean, if you've got a scar on your face, talk to a dermatologist, not a surgeon. "You'll see," Brennan promised Angela. "Ange, on the iron age project, Goodman does this thing. Hodgins isn't going to like it."

"_What thing?" _Angela asked.

"What iron age project?" I asked.

Brennan looked to me while she quickly explained, "The Jeffersonian has been charged with authenticating remains believed to be dated back to the iron age." She looked back to Angela. "He theorizes in a way. It sounds like he's making stuff up. It's… hard to explain, but it's going to irritate Hodgins."

"_Honey, you're in California." _Angela stated, like she thought that Brennan had actually managed to forget. "_Forget the iron age. Say these words: sky bar. Go there tonight. Both of you. Tell me everything." _She ordered, before ending with, "_When you go somewhere like Los Angeles, you're supposed to end the day on top of a roof, kissing a guy whose last name you might not know."_

Brennan and I looked at each other and then said "No" in exact synchrony.

Zach came back and stole the spotlight from Angela again. He pulled the webcam so that it angled towards him. "_I googled the films. While you're there, you might find it iconic to also look for a white male named Thomas Gibson, if you're into _Criminal Minds." I blinked. I really hadn't expected Zach to say anything like that, but it was definitely amusing. "_Dr. Brennan, one of these x-rays shows two dark clumps near the pelvis."_

"Behind what's left of the spleen," Brennan murmured, moving her hands slowly down the body, like she was feeling for the anomalies.

Booth entered the room noisily, his shoes thudding on the floor. "I got a list of missing persons, women in their early twenties." Without warning, Brennan pushed back some of the remaining flesh and ripped a dark tan thing from the body. Booth grimaced. "Do I really have to be here for this part?"

"_Do you think she swallowed that?" _Zach asked from over the speakers.

"Could be because she was a drug mule," Booth suggested.

Brennan made a face of distaste as she held it up. "It's a breast implant."

I pointed at Booth. "Those come with serial numbers. The bureau should be able to trace it back to the surgeon and the surgeon is legally bound by the investigation's cause to give us an identity."

Brennan nodded slowly and set the implant in a stainless steel tray. "We should be able to identify our victim in a couple of hours."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Hello! Someone PMed me with the question of why the fonts change from normal to bolded. Honestly, I have no idea why that's happening, because the document I use has it all in the same format. I also have a comment I wanted to reply to, so I thought this was the fastest way, since others are probably wondering the same thing.

_**LunaEvanna Longbottom**_ asked why Holly and Brennan's backstories are so similar. I thought this might come up, but I can't really explain without giving away information vital to future plots. However, I promise that there is an actual good explanation for it that will be given away eventually - I didn't just rip it off of Brennan's character.


	30. The Woman at the Airport, Part Two

The roof of our hotel had a pool on it. Chlorinated and everything, the shallow end was three feet and the deep end was ten feet. A four-foot hot tub was spaced about ten yards from the shallow end of the pool. Both pools of water were occupied by several women, wearing very little. Most of them had long, painstakingly-styled hair that they didn't want to get wet. The few that had short hair wore flashy earrings or had their hair dyed bright colors, with the exception of only a few. Some of the women's bikini tops were barely large enough to cover their breasts, but no one really seemed to mind. _California. It's practically another country._

"My neighborhood doesn't even have a pool," Booth stated with obvious longing. "Here, every hotel does."

"Well, you booked a hotel in the tourist hotspot. What were you expecting?" I asked rhetorically.

"You're both welcome to use my pool," Brennan offered, casually throwing out there that she lived in an apartment with a pool like it was common knowledge. _Damn. New York Times Bestsellers really pay well._

Trisha walked around the beautiful-women-infested pool to us and she held out her hands in a helpless gesture when she reached us. "Well, the breast implant lead went nowhere."

I looked at Brennan and she had looked at me at the same time. Both of us were confused. "But what about the serial numbers?" Brennan asked.

"The implants were reported stolen six months ago. Our victim must have gotten them off the black market," Trisha explained.

"There's a black market in breast implants?" Brennan asked me. I briefly considered being insulted that she thought I would know about the black market, but to be fair, I've been living in a bad neighborhood and they know I've been working at a bar in the same bad neighborhood, and I actually do know about the black market.

"Anything that costs more than twenty dollars can probably be found in the black market, Dr. Brennan," I said with a sigh. "Quality and quantity depends on vendors. Highest vendors sell things like drugs and illegally harvested organs. Up there on that list is surgical equipment and implants. Selling breast implants in a city like this is like raking in gold."

"We have the name of the doctor from whom the implants were stolen," Trisha informed us, although she didn't seem very enthused by this information.

"Who uses a black market breast implant?" Apparently Brennan was still mystified by the stupidity of black market breast implants. I don't really blame her; being literal-minded and extremely rational, it's no surprise. Besides, I don't understand it that well, either. I'm good with my body the way it is, thanks, but if you really want to alter yourself with plastics, then you should at least have the common sense to get an actual doctor so that you know the procedure is accepted medically and is with minimal risk.

"Back alley plastic surgeons use them," Booth said for a quick explanation. "They're not even real doctors."

"Are you going to write the screenplay?" Trisha blurted to Brennan out of the blue.

"What screenplay?" Brennan asked.

"The one based on your book."

Brennan furrowed her eyebrows at the irrelevance. "Well, I guess, maybe. The producer I'm meeting will probably tell me."

Booth whistled to get our attention again. "Okay guys," he started, but then corrected himself. "Girls, let's turn our attention back to the murder victim. I'd like to go pay a visit to Dr. Boobs." I rolled my eyes. _Wow. So mature._

"Why?" Trisha asked. "If implants were stolen from him, then he won't know anything."

I sighed, seriously getting irritated. "Look. I respect that you're probably good at your job, but right now, that doctor is the only lead that we've got, and leads are absolutely wonderful for screenplays – or even, say, working an actual, real-life homicide case!" I gave a big smile when Trisha just gave me this pissed off look. Booth whistled and gave me a thumbs-up out of sight of the other FBI agent.

* * *

><p>I sat on the comfortable twin-sized bed in the hotel room I shared with Brennan and Booth. While they got food down in the bar at the lobby, I had opted to check in with the Jeffersonian in the anthropologists' place so that she could get breakfast instead. I crossed my legs under me and waited for the Skype to load, having gotten Angela's Skype address from Brennan after she and Booth had finalized with me that I was fine on my own and that I didn't mind if they went to eat. (This hadn't really been good enough for Booth: He'd made himself feel better about it by promising to bring me back a snack.)<p>

Skype finally connected. "_Hi sweetie!" _Angela greeted with a smile, just looking up for a moment from her paper as the computer binged. "_Did you make plans to go to a sky bar?"_

"No," I answered, completely honest. "But we did make plans to go see a plastic surgeon." I gave a fake smile. "The breast implants were from the black market. We're talking to the doctor they were stolen from after Dr. Brennan and Booth eat breakfast."

"_Why aren't you with them?" _Angela asked.

"I'm not hungry," I said with a shrug, and it was truth. The other day I'd been stuffed with vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream and then made to eat a full-course meal at a fancy restaurant. I wasn't use to having so much food at once, just because I never ate very much. Since I started working at the lab, I've sort of given up regular meals and munch on snacks from vending machines to make up for it.

"_I have something for you," _a voice announced a second before Zach walked into view of the computer, his hands holding something behind his back.

Angela set her pencil down on her paper and looked away from the computer and to the intern. "_Is it chocolate?" _She asked hopefully.

"_No." _Zach answered.

Angela sighed and picked up her pencil again. "_Then I find my interest has flagged."_

Zach made a face at Angela when she looked away and rotated the cleaned skull around his torso and back in front of him, holding it level with Angela. "_Nice," _she commented sarcastically, seeing the skull right in front of her. "_Who is it?"_ She asked, taking it from him with gentle hands. She placed it on a stand next to the computer and out of sight of her own webcam, so I couldn't see it anymore.

"_It's the Hollywood murder victim,"_ Zach said.

"_Oh my God,"_ Angela breathed, looking at the skull that I still can't see. She was reaching out to it with one hand, presumably feeling the surgically-made changes to the bones. "_I see what Brennan means. This woman has had a lot of surgery."_

"_What's with Goodman and Hodgins?" _Zach asked. It seemed random to me, but since I haven't been there to know if anything's gone on, it may not actually be that random.

"_Oh, they're guys," _Angela said, like that explained everything. She sighed in irritation. "_They should just lay them out on the table and measure."_

I laughed out loud at that and covered my mouth with my hands, trying to quiet myself. I just couldn't help it.

Zach frowned in frustration when he didn't understand. "_Lay _what _out on the table and measure?"_

Angela's smile faded and my giggles quieted. We were both completely silent for a minute while Zach went from looking at Angela to me, clearly expecting an explanation. "Okay… awkward moment," I said, finally breaking the silence.

"_Let's just say they have different approaches, and they're guys, okay?" _Angela told Zach, trying to keep it simple.

Zach frowned. "_I'm a guy."_

Angela looked at me for a bit of help and I shrugged, looking straight at Zach through the webcam. "Yes, but… you're more highly evolved," I decided. "Angela, the girl didn't just change her face. She changed her skull. I have no idea how many times she had surgery, but it had to be more than just once. A reconstruction is going to be very difficult and it may be impossible to be completely accurate, so I'd suggest working first with what doesn't have any visible scarring. From there, I guess you can try to guess based on what the scarring indicates. Beyond that, I really don't know."

"_Yeah. It's alright. I'll try my best," _Angela said, before dropping her hands to her lap and sighing. "_This is going to make Brennan nuts."_

"_You know one thing," _Zach said with a soft, sad smile. "_She's going to be beautiful." _Both Angela and I regarded him surprise. "_Why would anyone go through all this pain and not end up beautiful?"_

I smiled softly. Zach was so sincere about it that it made the reality of the situation that much more depressing. "_Does the name Joan Rivers mean anything to you?" _Angela asked Zach.

"Or Michael Jackson?" I suggested.

Zach looked up and pursed his lips, thinking. "_One of them. The other I'll go look up."_

* * *

><p>"Every culture nurtures ideals of beauty towards which people strive. Fine." Brennan ranted to Booth and I loudly, her voice echoing in the waiting room of the plastic surgeon's practice. Booth and I were trying to hide our faces in the magazines. Brennan is really awesome, and I wouldn't have a problem with it, if it weren't for the other four women waiting for appointments giving Booth, Brennan, Trisha, and I dirty looks. But for fear of her wrath, no one was telling her to be quiet. Instead we meekly sank into our chairs while the anthropologist paced.<p>

Brennan continued her ranting vehemently. "In the future, people will look back upon the surgical alterations of the body with the same horror that we regard the binding of the feet or the use of bronze coils to extend the neck."

I lowered my magazine a little bit so that my eyes were visible to the steaming scientist. "Hey Dr. Brennan, would you like to speak up a bit? It's pretty difficult to hear every word you say in this very quiet waiting room," I said, trying to subtly hint to her to lower her voice when it seemed that both Booth and Trisha were too nervous to do so.

"It's barbaric!" Brennan spat, emphasizing her point when she stopped pacing just to tell me this. "It's painful." She looked at the women waiting with thinly-veiled disgust. "It's wrong. This murder victim may never be identified because some glorified barber with a medical degree had the arrogance to think that he could do better than the millennium of evolution!"

I shrank back further and brought the magazine up again. "I tried," I whispered to Booth and Trisha, who were on either side of me. "Your turn."

Trisha brought the magazine away from her face suddenly, letting the pages bend themselves slightly as her hands resettled in her lap. "Do you know what producer you're meeting with, Dr. Brennan?"

"No, my publisher didn't give me a name." Brennan shook her head. "I don't know what a producer does specifically."

"Nobody does," Trisha said with a sigh. "But it's really important."

The secretary looked up from behind her desk and looked at Brennan with annoyance. "Dr. Brennan, Agent Booth, and Miss Kirkland. Dr. Kostov will see you now," she announced, before looking back to her computer and pressing a button on the telephone receiver to transfer a call.

I practically jumped up from my seat like it was a bomb. _Yes! Operation: Distract Brennan Before the Women Murder Us is a success! _Trisha started to get up, but Booth pushed himself up from the chair and told her, "You can remain here, Agent Finn."

"Yes, sir," Trisha said, her face falling.

I brushed my hair out of my face as I stepped into the plastic surgeon's office. It was clean and organized, but that didn't make me like it any less. Kostov stood briefly from his seat behind his desk and nodded in respectful acknowledgement as we came in. "Sir, misses, please make yourselves comfortable," he courteously invited.

I sat down in a chair across from the desk while Brennan and Booth sat in the couch next to my newly-claimed seat. Brennan reached into her bag and set the evidence-bagged breast implant on the table in front of the doctor. "Do you recognize this, Dr. Kostov?" She asked, going straight to the million-dollar question. _She clearly doesn't like it here any more than I do._

Kostov leaned forward slightly for a moment before rocking back into the chair. He seemed to be projecting this friendly persona, even though any normal person would probably be a bit bewildered if someone just set a breast implant on their desk. _Then again, who said he's normal? He cuts open faces for a living. _"That would be your high-profile double-lumen full C saline."

"Yeah." Booth nodded, even though he probably had no clue what the term meant from a surgeon's perspective. "It's from a shipment of implants you reported stolen six months ago."

Kostov's smile slipped slightly. "I have a hard time believing you're returning one implant to me."

"I found it in the remains of a murdered girl," Brennan stated coolly.

I glanced at Brennan. Her cold attitude directed towards the surgeon was totally reasonable, in my opinion, but I knew that we needed to try to stay on his good side to ensure his cooperation. "Have many more of the stolen implants been recovered?" I asked.

"Yeah," the doctor nodded. "Approximately three weeks ago, there was a faulty one. Had to be removed by a surgeon out in the valley."

"From whom?" Booth prodded after it became clear that Kostov had finished giving out the information.

Kostov crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows, straightening his back and resting his elbows on the edge of his table. "A Heidi."

"I don't know what that means," Brennan said, looking to me in confusion for an explanation.

"That's Californian speak for a prostitute," I said with a slight quirk of my lips. _If I complained of aches, she could tell me exactly what part of my body was hurting, a plethora of suggestions as to why, and several possible resolutions, but she doesn't know the slang term for a prostitute._

"Los Angeles Police Department was investigating. They can tell you what agency the girl was working for," Kostov suggested. He looked at me suddenly, tilting his head a bit like he was sizing me up. His eyes slipped from mine and I had the feeling that he was more interested in my nose and cheeks than he was with the conversation I was trying to have with him. "You have the most… beautiful bone structure," he murmured.

_Well, that's not at all totally freaking creepy. _I had half a mind to run away, and the other part wanted to punch him in the face. Since neither seemed like my brightest ideas, I looked uncomfortably to the FBI agent next to me, hoping for a bit of defense.

"I can't take credit," I said in a tone that I hoped conveyed that I didn't appreciate the comment. I'm okay with being told "hey, you look pretty" (I mean, everyone likes being told once in a while that they look nice), but the way he said it was just disturbing. "It's genetic." Hopefully that hint will tell him I'm not interested in having my face altered.

"How old are you?" Kostov asked, giving me a once-over and meeting my eyes, like he was trying to decide whether my body alone suggested that I was an adult.

I didn't answer immediately, instead fighting a scowl back with the most neutral expression I could. "Why do you want to know?" I demanded.

Kostov stood up like I'd invited him and he stepped around the edge of his table and to me. While I was sitting, he loomed over me. "Well, it's never too early to watch problem areas – the jaw, little pouches beneath the eyes." He reached out with one hand to brush his fingers along my cheek, but then stopped halfway. "Do you mind?"

I stared up at him warily. "Do I mind if you invade my personal space to touch me and tell me what you'd like to do to destroy the soft tissue in my face to dramatically alter my appearance so that I fit your personal qualifications of beauty in a visually-stimulated society? No, go on ahead. Why would that bother me?"

He reached out again, completely misinterpreting the sarcasm.

"If you touch her, she will break you," Booth cautioned with a chuckle. "She doesn't like to be touched, and she thinks what you do is-"

"Barbaric," Brennan interrupted, glaring up at the surgeon.

I reached up suddenly and grabbed his wrist in a vice grip, taking him by surprise. I tightened my hold around his wrist. "Touch my face, and I'll break yours," I promised. "I don't want anyone touching my face, much less when they're talking about mutilating me to fit an image that I don't even care about. And you know, I'm pretty sure that Agent Booth could have you arrested for what you've already attempted to initiate. I'm a minor."

Kostov looked as though he knew that he'd just stepped in hot water. I smirked up at him and suddenly jerked forward, snapping my teeth. He jumped back faster than a rabbit and I exchanged a look with Booth.

* * *

><p>LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) was kind enough to do part of our work for us. They got the woman who ran <em>Aphrodite Escorts<em> into the interrogation room. The girl who'd had to have the faulty implants removed had been from the woman's prostitution/call girl service. Booth and I sat across the table from her.

"According to LAPD, a black market breast implant from the same shipment showed up in another girl from _Aphrodite Escorts_," I said, nearly monotonously. None of that information was new to me anymore; I was just repeating the basics of the situation for Miss Bardue's benefit.

Bardue was a pretty short woman with black, straightened hair and a pasty complexion due to all of the powders and makeups she used. She wore a black and white top and seemed calm, if not bored with the interrogation, despite that it had just started. Booth asked the first question. "Are you missing anyone?"

"We're not looking into your business, Miss Bardue," I said, going through the normal motions when I noticed her fingers curl up into a stressed fist. "We are solving a murder."

Bardue seemed to measure up my sincerity before folding her hands pompously in her lap and keeping her back straight. I half wondered if she had a corset or something on that was keeping her posture so well. "I haven't heard from Rachel in two weeks."

"Is that unusual?" Booth asked.

"Rachel booked out at a one-week rate." Bardue said, and I smiled just for a millisecond that we now knew our murder victim's name. _Rachel. _"She knows to check in with me if the client wants to extend the contract. It's… time to worry."

Booth pushed a yellow file folder across the table at Bardue. She looked down at it wearily, unsure whether or not to open it. I motioned towards them with my hand and she picked it up, taking the faxed pictures out of the folder and looking through them, putting each at the back of the collection as she looked at them. "Do any of these women resemble Rachel?" Booth asked.

Bardue sighed and shook her head slightly. "If I had to pick one, this is the closest," she said, thumbing back through to find the one she had in mind. She pulled it from the collection and passed it to me. "But not really."

"Does Rachel have a last name?" Booth asked.

Bardue smiled very faintly, like Booth had told a silly joke. "Rachel wasn't even her real first name, but she goes by Rachel Ashaunce." _Good. Okay. We can work with that. _"Rachel went to Vegas with a long-time customer."

"We need his name," I said next, before Booth could. This time, Bardue looked like she had no plans of answering. I waited for a moment before I sighed and leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms behind my head. "Miss Bardue, it's always the same story. A beautiful young woman is wanted by a man who can't have her, and then someone dies. Rachel was murdered, attacked by someone that she most likely knew, and it's our job to figure out who it was. We're not trying to take down your business, really."

Bardue shifted uneasily. "A Dr. Anton Kostov. An assembly-line nip tucker in town." Booth and I exchanged serious looks and Bardue looked piercingly at us. "If that's all?"

"Miss Bardue, do you have any idea of what Rachel looked like before her plastic surgery?" Booth asked, his tone seeming final.

Bardue smirked breezily. "Which time?"

I sighed and moved to stand up. "Do you have a card, Miss Bardue?" It's better to keep in contact in case we need to talk to her again, right?

Bardue took out her purse and slipped her manicured fingers into the first section, pulling out a little cardstock card with her name, number, and business information on the front. She slid it across to our side of the table and looked up at Booth. "We provide a law enforcement discount."

"Ah," I said, picking up the card and pushing it into my pocket. I made for the door, kicking the chair back under the table with my heel. Just outside, where Brennan was waiting for us to finish the interview, I threw my hands in the air in frustration. Brennan jumped in alarm. "Look, I get that Booth's an attractive guy and all, but really. Why do people hit on him when he's investigating? It's not like he's going to ask them out for coffee during an interrogation!"

Back in the morgue/examination area that Brennan and I had been provided, Booth, Brennan and I all stood around the table that the now clean bones rested upon, bouncing ideas and statements off of each other in the hopes that something would fall into place and give us another lead.

"Kostov knew Rachel as a patient and she knew him as a client," Booth stated simply.

"Kostov wasn't the victim's only plastic surgeon," Brennan said, completely convinced of this. "I looked at images in ten times magnification of the jawbone surgery. Kostov doesn't do work that sophisticated."

I scoffed. "Huh. Yet he still leaves marks." I ran my fingertips of one hand along my jawline without really thinking about it. "I can't believe he thought I'd be okay with getting plastic surgery done. He had the nerve to ask how old I was and start pointing out possible flaws!" I was getting angry just thinking about it again.

"Well, you know, those people are like parasites," Booth said, trying to give a simile that he felt was accurate and that would calm me at the same time. "They find a pretty girl, they make her self-conscious, and then they feed off of that to get a client, and _boom_, next thing they know, they're raking in thousands of dollars from surgeries out of the insecurities that they planted."

"It's cruel," Brennan said in disgust and distaste.

"I got more of a creep vibe from it," I said, not completely disagreeing.

One of the large monitors on the far left lit up, first with the "incoming call" Skype logo, and then the colors blurred and pixelated until they settled and formed the image of Zachary Addy, standing with his hands clasped behind his back and a pleased smile on his face. "_Zach Addy," _he called to get Booth and Brennan's attention, dragging out the first A. "_I live to serve."_

Brennan brightened immediately at the sight of her intern. "Zach, this facial surgery – the edges of the bone are almost scalped, as if the blade simultaneously cut and applied torsion," she said, after restarting her sentence to more eloquently state the fact.

Zach inclined his chin while he listened and then nodded carefully, already guessing her next request. "_You need to know if this procedure is recognized and sanctioned by the American Medical Association."_

Booth looked over at Brennan in intrigued surprise. "You think Kostov is performing illegal surgical procedures?"

Brennan raised her shoulders in an "I'm not sure" gesture. "It won't help us discover the identity of our victim, but it might help us catch her killer," Brennan said, gazing sadly at the bones on the table. _She's really upset about how desperate Rachel must have been to conceal her real appearance._

Booth blinked at the way that Brennan worded it, like catching the murderer would just be a happy bonus. "That's the point, Bones."

"What?" Brennan asked, looking up at Booth.

"To catch the murderer," Booth specified.

On the monitor, Hodgins came up behind Zach and grabbed his shoulders, pushing him off away to the side. Out of view, Zach indignantly cried, "_Hey!" _but Hodgins didn't really seem to care. _Jesus, that's a bit harsh. Whatever happened to manners in that institute? "I'm sending you a catalogue of all the stuff they sent me," _Hodgins informed Brennan. "_Soil samples, pollen, particulates, et cetera that were on the body parts. There's nothing too surprising, except for some E glass fibers."_

Brennan snorted and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. "She didn't pick that up in a field."

"Marine fiberglass," I told Booth when I noticed him about to open his mouth and ask what "E glass fibers" meant in layman's terms. "Meaning that the victim was on a boat shortly before her death."

"_Precisely. Xena hit that on the nail,"_ Hodgins agreed. "_Oh, and also, look at this."_ He aimed a remote in his hand at a computer off-screen and the monitor to the right of the exam table came to life with a picture of a chipped acrylic fingernail, painted red with a diamond stud embedded in the polish. "_It's probably her own. I sent it to the FBI crime lab so they can run DNA tests. That's zirconium, by the way, not an actual diamond, so I'm guessing she wasn't your top-drawer, high-class prostitute."_

Zach shoved his way back onto the screen and I fought back a little laugh at his constant battle to be on screen, first against Angela, now against Hodgins. "_All of the osteological elements are consistent with recent elective surgeries, except the compound fractures in the right tibia and fibula which indicate traumatic compression and-"_

I held up a finger to the webcam for a minute. "Hold on, let's not leave out Booth." I looked over to the agent in question, who was reaching out for Brennan's phone as it laid on the table. "She had her leg crushed. Remodeling suggests it was around age thirteen. It's likely from an automobile accident."

Booth opened the phone and tapped some buttons before Brennan realized that he was using her phone. "Excuse me! That's mine!" She exclaimed.

"_I analyzed the molars," _Zach continued, oblivious to the ridiculous scuffle that ensued. Booth finished typing in a phone number and held the mobile up to his ear while Brennan tried to reach for it to take it back. He kept one arm extended to keep her back and for a few seconds, she struggled against it before she realized that she wasn't going to get her phone back and she gave up. _These people are more entertaining than TV. "Oxygen and stranti isotopes in enamel indicate an early childhood in New England, while the dentin suggests six to ten years in southern California."_

Booth ignored Zach, speaking into the phone once someone on the other end picked up. "Hey, Miss Bardue!" He greeted with a pleasant ring in his voice. "Hi, it's Special Agent Booth. I've reconsidered your offer. I was wondering if I could have one of your ladies visit me today?"

Brennan looked at Booth in what could only be described as horror. "You're ordering a prostitute from my cell phone?!" Unable to take it anymore, I doubled over laughing, clapping a hand over my mouth to not be heard over the phone line.

"Uh, yeah, I was wondering if Rachel ever took part in any of those two-on-one specials," Booth stated mildly, and my laughter increased in volume.

"_Hey, the old two-on-one special," _Hodgins grinned impishly. "_Classic!"_

"_What's a classic?" _Zach asked, but Hodgins just shook his head and refused to explain.

"That's great!" Booth exclaimed enthusiastically. "Just send me whoever she worked with the most."

"You're ordering a hooker to my hotel?" Brennan exclaimed, her voice getting slightly squeaky in disbelief and embarrassment.

"_Did I hear you say hooker?" _Zach asked, glancing at Hodgins and forcing his way into the screen yet again, attention caught.

Hodgins pouted. "_How come I never get to go on these out of town trips?" _He demanded, whining.

Booth didn't bother to dignify the squints with an answer, instead looking to Brennan to explain himself before she killed him for her humiliation. "Because you have much looser daily allowances than I do!"

Brennan glared at him and snatched her phone away possessively. "Well, have fun," she said snippily. "I have to get up early tomorrow."

"Why?" Booth asked.

"I'm meeting a producer," Brennan said sharply. "And Holly's going with me."

"I am?" I asked. "This is new information to me."

"Either that or you can go see a hooker with Booth," she said, motioning to the agent with the hand that wasn't clutching her phone.

I briefly considered that for a moment. _See a prostitute with Booth for a two-hour meeting, or only see a prostitute with Booth for an hour and spent the other half of that time with Brennan? Well, best of both worlds, I guess. _"Okay, that'll work," I conceded without much of a fight.

* * *

><p>I looked over to the clock on the wall on my way out of the police department, on my way to get a taxi back to the hotel to change clothes and put on something more casual for the driving test Booth had arranged, when I was stopped.<p>

"Miss Kirkland!" Trisha called after me. I sighed. I'd left the morgue a few minutes early, anyway, so I slowed to a stop and turned around to watch Trisha as she tried to catch up with me. Her hair swished as she half ran to reach me. "Can I have a moment? Please?" She asked, coming to a slow stop in front of me.

I nodded, blinking and slightly interested. "We're investigating someone's murder together. Of course you can have a moment."

She came to a complete stop and lifted up one of her hands uncertainly to play with her hair. With her fingers, she twisted a strand around her finger and then pulled her hand away, letting her hair pull itself out of the spiral. "Um, have I done something to offend Agent Booth or yourself?" She asked.

I frowned, uncomfortable. "I'm really not into the whole "west-coast-in-touch-with-your-feelings" thing…"

"Yeah," Trisha said, although since I hadn't really said anything for her to agree to, I assume it's just because she wanted me to keep focus on her. "I'm really good at my job, and I've been nothing but cooperative and helpful to you, but the two of you are just freezing me out." I raised my eyebrows as a symbol for her to continue. "And… And I know that Agent Booth has nothing against working with women, because he's partners with you and Dr. Brennan," I didn't bother to correct her on that I wasn't Booth's partner. "And I know that you don't have anything against the FBI, because you work with Booth, so I'm left with the conclusion that your problems must be with me."

I sighed softly, trying my best not to be mean to her. She really didn't seem like a bad person, and she hadn't returned any of the quips that Booth or I had made, instead backing down to us when we got snappish. "Okay, look," I said, honestly trying to understand. "I have no issues with you. Honestly, I don't. I think you're nice and I think you must be a very patient woman to put up with me." I shrugged halfheartedly. "But the fact is, I'm not good with people, and when it's with people that I don't know, then usually I shy away from human interaction like it burns. I have no problems, really, I'm just not very inclined for socializing. As for Agent Booth," I said, making sure to use his title with his name. "I suggest you ask him. As far as I know, you haven't done anything to upset him. He's not unreasonable; if you bring it up calmly, he'll listen. Although, if I can make an observation," I added. "He gets sharp with you when you switch topics from screenplays to this case. I believe that your ambitions combined with your working for the FBI may be part of the problem."

Trisha nodded, not very happy with what advice I had given her about Booth, but she seemed more appeased by my explanation of my own coolness.

* * *

><p>I sat in the parking lot, leaning back against the driver's seat with my arms crossed across my chest impatiently for the official conducting my test to finish filling out my basic information. Unfortunately, Booth had been told to wait back inside, leaving me alone with the man who didn't seem to respect me very much. I stretched out my legs, my feet touching the gas and brake pedals, but not pressing down on them. The keys dangled from their place in the ignition, but the car wasn't started.<p>

"Date of birth?" The official asked, double-checking what he had written down with me.

"December twenty-seventh, nineteen eighty-seven." I said monotonously. I was going to be tested using a pretty modern but common car. It wasn't exactly an SUV or minivan, but it was a pretty large vehicle somewhere in between a van and a car. I'm not sure what it's called but I've seen the same model several times around D.C.. This particular one was white and had one of those air fresheners pinned to a vent. At least this one isn't motion activated.

…Yeah. When I had my permit with one of the foster families, the foster mother insisted that we keep a motion activated air freshener in the car so that whenever someone got in, the air would smell nice for them. She didn't consider that if you need to lean across to get the proof of insurance from the glove compartment, then the air freshener will spray you in the face.

That was not a fun experience for me. I spent half an hour trying to wash my eyes of the chemicals and then stop crying.

When the official finally set his clipboard on the dash, I threw my head back before reaching forward, grabbing the edge, and pushing it back onto his legs. I'm sorry, I just can't drive with papers and things on the dashboard. If the sun's out and there's little cloud cover, then the reflections go up on the windshield and it's harder to see, and it's just always bothered me.

The official seemed a little peeved that I'd done that but I really couldn't care less.

When he told me to start driving, and told me the route (since I wasn't local, he had to show me a map so I'd know what he was talking about), I twisted the keys and pulled back out of the parking space, and a minute later, he told me to drive the way I normally would. I shrugged at that and then rolled down the driver's side window and turned on the radio.

While Taylor Swift sang _Sparks Fly_ and I hummed along to the chorus, which was really the only part of the song that I knew, I drove out onto the road beside the building Booth was waiting in. The official (I really should have asked his name earlier) seemed disgruntled by my carelessness and lack of visible concentration, but anyone who knows me would know that when I'm trying to maintain focus or stress I hum. Brennan and Angela both knew that, but the official didn't, so he started questioning me.

"Keep the window rolled up," he instructed. "It blocks out unnecessary noise and keeps the wind from making you need to look away from the road."

I smirked and raised one hand from the steering wheel to tap the side of my plastic blue sunglasses. "It enables me to hear if a siren is going and I need to pull over, and my sunglasses keep anything from hindering my vision."

"Roll up the window," he said again.

"Why would I do that?" I asked, enjoying taunting him. I was driving perfectly legally and I was doing a good job at it, too, and it's not like he can dock scores for sass.

"Because I asked you to."

"Yeah, well, you're making me uncomfortable," I countered with a decisive nod. _Yeah, I'll go with that._

The official looked taken aback. "What does that have anything to do with the windows being rolled down?"

"Because if they're rolled down, then I'm free to scream "kidnap" out the window if you start creeping me out any more."

Once we got back to the building, I parked the car as he lifted his pen. "Something I noticed. Why, after going for nearly a year without a permit, are you suddenly in want of a license?"

I shrugged and took the keys out of the ignition, holding them up by the white tag that labeled the make and model of the car they went with. The official took them from me. "So I can drive the awesome car Agent Booth rented."

"Is that all?" He asked skeptically, raising his eyebrows.

"Well, I don't exactly have a car of my own. I bet you've heard more pointless reasons before."


	31. The Woman at the Airport, Part Three

I sat on a stool behind the cameras, looking to the front of the TV filming set and watching in interest. I kicked my legs lazily and looked around at the camera crew. I was sitting close enough to watch them and catch detail but far enough away so that people didn't need to rush around me and I wasn't in view of any of the cameras. On the set, Brennan sat in a chair at a slight angle to famous movie producer, Penny Marshall. Although I didn't recognize her by name, she was clearly successful, as her clothes were designer, her purse was from a _Vera Bradley _hundred-dollar line, and I suspected her dangling earrings had real gems. Meanwhile, I wore jeans and a _J.C. Penny's _top under a jacket. What's that tell you?

It was kind of fun to watch as the interview began, going live. The spotlight flashed on and Brennan blinked, surprised. It was bemusing to watch her expressions, as she seemed kind of baffled by the entire spectacle of lights and the camera arrangements and the backdrop.

The interviewer was actually pretty nice. She was admittedly preppy and cheerful, but I suppose you have to be to be an interviewer for a major TV channel. It makes you seem more personable, apparently. She wore a black, formal suit and casual makeup and wore her blonde hair down, so she seemed both professional and friendly. She got me a bottle of water while I waited for Brennan to go through the interview.

"I'm here with Penny Marshall, one of the most prolific hyphenates in Hollywood, an actress, producer and director of such hit as _A League of Their Own _and _Big_," the interviewer said with a great smile at the camera, introducing the two people she'd be asking questions of. I'd not heard of either of the movies she mentioned. "Her latest project is _Bred in the Bone_, a thriller based on the best-selling novel by crime-fighting anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan." She motioned with one hand to Brennan, who still seemed like she was more interested in the use of all of the equipment than the actual interview. "Okay, so how did this all come together?"

"I have no idea," Brennan answered truthfully, looking at the cameras curiously rather than the hostess. This elicited a moment of uncertain silence from all three of the women on camera.

Penny picked up the silence, knowing better than Brennan that publicity is important for image and production. "Well, my brother Gary gave me the book, and I liked it, and then this whole bidding war started, and I usually don't get into that kind of thing, but in this case…" she trailed off, as it was pretty obvious what had happened from that point on.

"A bidding war?" The interviewer repeated brightly in excitement. "That's got to be a thrill for a beginning authoress!" She prompted Brennan subtly to say something.

Brennan didn't quite get the memo. "I – wasn't actually there," she said, looking between the interviewer and I, and I realized she was trying to see what I thought she should do.

The interviewer took this in stride, and to her credit, she was good at making fast, non-awkward transitions. "You must be a big fan of Penny's films. Which one is your favorite?"

I made a thumbs-up motion at this for Brennan to see. _Yes, go along with it. _Brennan looked back to the hostess with more confidence. "I enjoyed her humorous treatment of the time-space paradox."

Cue awkward silence. _Well, she didn't mean for it to happen…_

The interviewer took a moment, but she finally got it and thought that it was a joke. She laughed and pointed to Penny, saying the name of the movie _Big._

Penny looked at Brennan and smiled warmly. "That's very funny," she complimented, also thinking that Brennan had actually been telling a joke. "Time-space paradox," she repeated, amused.

"Penny, who is going to write the script?" The hostess asked.

Brennan's attention snapped from the interviewer to the producer. "Don't I get to do that?" She asked, genuinely confused.

Penny glanced at her. "We'll talk," she promised.

The interview was interrupted by the shrill ringing of a phone, and even though it's annoying to watch when that happens on TV, this time I was actually relieved. Brennan's really the best person ever in my opinion, but she isn't the most socially apt, and even though she had been genuine in what she said, she'd unintentionally made the interview a bit awkward.

Both Penny and Brennan got their cell phones from their pockets, and the hostess now looked a bit stressed. To be fair, she wasn't showing it much. It turned out to have been Brennan's phone, and she answered it, raising it to her ear as she looked over at the main cameraman. "Cut. Stop. Whatever you say," she ordered, and the producer looked over at the interviewer, who shrugged. Brennan listened to the person through the phone. "Well, I want to come with you." She pushed her phone against her shoulder to block her voice from passing through the line. "I have to go, because we have a suspect, and I have to go," she repeated, getting up from her seat and passing between the other two people on live film.

I smiled apologetically to both women as I jumped up and followed after Brennan. I would have said something, but I didn't want my voice broadcasting across America. No thank you.

* * *

><p>While Brennan went back to the hotel room to put on a change of clothes that wasn't particular to a TV studio, I went and took a taxi to the hotel Booth was visiting. We'd arranged the night before that I would ask around if anyone had known anyone named Rachel, since Bardue's agency sort of rents out hotels specifically for their purpose sometimes, and Booth had established that they'd be on the roof, drinking wine. Very nice, Booth. Way to go.<p>

I found Booth right away, but he was having a serious conversation with the girl he was talking to – her hair was a soft brown and she wore a bikini. Her nails were painted red and had a white spot on each where there might have been a sort of gem or something (_Why does that design seem familiar?) _and she wore pretty brown and green earrings, so I figured that that was who Booth had been assigned to see. Seeing as the girl looked devastated and Booth was completely solemn, I chose not to bother them, since he had probably already dropped the bomb.

I gathered up my patience and then walked forward to a group of girls who were sitting at the roof bar, thinking that that was as good of a place to start as any.

I walked up to them. "Excuse me," I said, interrupting their conversation about a movie that about half of them had already seen. They looked to me, and about three out of five seemed irritated, while one looked sympathetic and apologetic, and the other just looked surprised. I wished now probably more than ever that I had some sort of identification card to flash, like a government badge or lab security clearance pass, because it would get their attention in a better way. "My name is Holly Kirkland. I'd like to ask you all a few questions."

A blonde girl looked over at her friend. "What do you think?" She asked, sounding like she really didn't care about what I was asking.

"No, I don't think she's quite there yet."

The blonde woman looked back to me. "You should wait a few years, honey," she said, and even though the term was usually an endearment, it seemed more scathing than it should have been.

_I should wait a few years – what the hell do they think I'm asking them about?!_

I had a sudden urge to just slink back to the corner of the roof and wait for Booth to finish with his conversation, but that wasn't very helpful, and the reason they keep bringing me along is because of my abilities to get information from people (and to translate from science to layman's terms). Not that manipulation, intimidation, and lying are very good ways to get information, but they work, and it's not like people are going to give me information that incriminates them just because I ask politely.

"No, no," I said quickly. "No, I mean I'd like to ask if you know a woman named Rachel!"

"You'd need to be a bit more specific," the brown-haired woman who had seemed sympathetic had been the only one giving me true attention.

"Rachel Ashaunce?" I said, repeating the name that we'd gotten from our interrogations. "She worked for _Aphrodite Escorts._"

"I might have seen her around," the brunette said. "Tall, pretty, white skinned?"

"Yes," I said, although that wasn't a very good description. Since we don't know what she looked like for sure because of all of those god-forsaken plastic surgeries, at least the name rang a bell. "That sounds like her."

"Why are you looking for her?" The woman asked, but the others were back to their conversation and mostly ignoring me. I should have expected the question – a "call girl" is a fancy name for a prostitute of a higher rank. The difference is a thin line, but call girls usually work for agencies and therefore it's more of a positive association than the title of prostitute. The point of the matter is that they see many people who have connections and secrets that they may not want out in the open, and so they'd be wary of giving out information about someone in their community.

I invented a lie on the spot, almost ashamed of how easily I did so. "Rachel's my cousin," I lied with my best attempt at an honest smile, which wasn't that bad, actually. "I'm visiting her from San Diego, but she hasn't been answering her phone."

Less suspicious, the woman shrugged apologetically. "I haven't spoken to her in a while. I'm sorry I can't help you." Done with me, she indulged in conversation again with her friends.

I spent another fifteen minutes approaching bikini-clad women and asking them if they had a moment and then asking about Rachel Ashaunce. This didn't go well for me. One woman actually told me to wait until I was legal when I asked her if I could have a few minutes of her time. I slunk back over to the bar of the roof to wait for Booth, buying a lunch of fruit punch and chips with mild salsa.

Booth took up the seat next to me before I really expected it. "I thought you'd be asking about Rachel," he said, raising his eyebrows at me inquisitively.

I just groaned. "I gave up." Booth laughed.

* * *

><p>Back to the sunlight.<p>

The Californian beach had golden sand and white and brown and reddish shells over it closer to the waves. The water was beautiful and blue and the big, fluffy clouds overhead cast just enough shadow for me to not get the entire heat of the sun. Booth, Brennan, Trisha and I stood on the sand, looking back and forth between the two teams playing volleyball on the sand.

"There's a pretty good chance one of these leaping losers is our killer," Booth reminded us, looking between the two teams with distaste.

"You always think it's the boyfriend," Brennan stated with equal distaste.

"Well, he loved her, he found out she was a prostitute," Booth justified defensively. "I'd say anyone who plays this stupid game is capable of murder."

"That's harsh," I said with a frown at him. "I used to play volleyball at recess when I was in middle school."

"Being capable of murder and being a murderer are very different," Brennan told me, and… I _think _she was trying to be reassuring. "You are not a murderer, although from what I've seen, you are quite capable of homicide."

"Wow. Thanks." I said sarcastically, but it was lost on her. Just because I could kill someone if I really wanted to doesn't mean it's okay to be called capable of murder. The truth just doesn't matter in this case, because it's still kind of offensive.

"It seems like you've got this case sewn up," Brennan said, returning her attention to Booth. She shoved his arm, trying to push him towards the volleyball players mockingly. "Why don't you just go and arrest them all?"

Booth rolled his eyes and raised his badge up in the air, yelling out his title of FBI. "Excuse me guys, ladies!" He shouted to the players, but they either didn't hear or weren't paying attention. "Ladies, gentlemen, excuse me?" He called again. This time someone had to have heard, but they just kept ignoring him. "Please?" He tried again, and his shoulders slumped.

I sighed. This clearly wasn't going to work. My shoes sliding over the little traction that the sand gave, I ran into one of the teams and pushed past one of the male players to get to the volleyball as it came over the net. I caught it with my hands and pivoted so the guy who'd been trying to get it couldn't steal it back.

I tossed it up into the air and jumped as it came down, hitting it with an underhand swing. It sailed up into the sky and flew further down the beach. As people started yelling at me in anger, I motioned to Booth and he held up his badge while I shouted over them. "Everyone who isn't Nick Harberson, go get the ball!"

"Go fetch," Brennan prompted.

Grumbling and muttering (and a few were flipping me off), the players grudgingly started to trudge down the beach and away from the makeshift volleyball court except for a sandy-haired man in beach boxers and a white shirt, who looked puzzled and worried.

"Hey, beach boy," I called, waving my arm in a wide invitation. Nick looked after his friends longingly before sighing and coming over.

I plopped myself down on the bench and crossed my legs, leaning back and stretching my arms out over the back of the seat and beckoned the others over. Nick sat down after a moment of debate on the opposite end of the bench and Brennan and Booth stood on either side, while Trisha hovered over the back.

All it took was a question about Nick's girlfriend and he seemed totally smitten for her. "God, she was so sweet," he said wistfully, looking out over the ocean. "I actually thought about getting back together with her, even though-"

"You broke out all the windows in her car!" Brennan accused. Clearly, breaking someone's car windows is really very not okay with her.

"Well, what would you do if you found out your girlfriend was a prostitute?" Nick asked rhetorically, looking up at her and meeting her gaze head-on, and Brennan didn't actually have an immediate reply, but after the moment had passed she gave him a look that clearly conveyed, _I wouldn't have broken all of the windows in her car._

"When did you last see Rachel?" Booth asked, changing the topic away from breaking car windows.

"Sandra," Nick corrected, settling into a glum little state of depression. "Her name is Sandra Cane… at least, as far as I knew."

Booth frowned, although I wasn't sure whether it was because of the new alias or because Nick hadn't actually answered his question. "When did you last see Sandra?"

"About a month ago," Nick replied, staring down at the yellow of the beach and digging his toes into the sand. "I was tending bar at a function at the Colonnade."

"Did you speak to her?" Booth asked.

"No. No, I was working," Nick responded, his eyebrows pulling down into a sulk. "So was she." He just looked at the ground for a moment before he looked up. "I didn't kill her," he said.

Brennan shook her head at him. Her eyes conveyed disapproval and complete disappointment. "How could you _not _know what she was doing for money? Did you even know her at all?" _Well, that's a little harsh. _Brennan's not used to struggling for money. The foster system put her with families that at least provided for her financially, and then she went to college and got a well-paying job on top of becoming a bestselling authoress. I know because of my community that when you need money, you'll do everything you can for it, and lying and deceit can become second nature if you don't have another option. Most prostitutes don't sell themselves just for sex; they need the money for school or medical bills, but they don't have any other means of getting it.

Nick scoffed humorlessly and looked out over the ocean. "She said she was modeling." He paused a moment and no one said anything, because we could all see he was collecting his thoughts to explain something. "The thing about Sandra is that, as pretty as she was, she was just never pretty enough. She would be all black and blue, and then she would heal and she would look beautiful. I mean, really, really beautiful, and we'd be sure something was going to break for her, and of course it wouldn't, and then she would be back in front of that mirror. And no matter what I said…" His voice got tight closer to the end and he swallowed. "Look… I never knew her. I never understood here. I'm probably the last guy you should be asking about her."

Brennan seemed pretty good with this explanation. She looked over to Booth, silently asking if we were done and Booth held out his arms, exasperated. "He's an actor! Of course he's convincing!"

"I don't know," I said with a twinge of reluctance. Nick seemed sincere enough, but why would an actor be hanging out at the beach? "He's probably not a very good one. I mean, he's out here playing volleyball in the middle of the day, so he probably hasn't been hired." Nick gave me this insulted, pissed off look like he could barely believe I'd said that. "What?" I asked defensively. "It's just a simple observation!"

* * *

><p>Brennan, Booth, and I walked just behind Kostov, following him from his office while he walked to his car. The street was still sunny and it was bright and warm outside, almost to the point where I considered going to the store and buying a lighter, half-length jacket with long sleeves if we went back to the mall, just so that I wouldn't be wearing the big, heavy polyester. It's much warmer in California than it is in Washington D.C.. Kostov was in a hurry to get somewhere and he carried his briefcase at his side. Booth tailed on his left while Brennan and I kept just a pace back on the other side.<p>

"Isn't it against your ethical code to have sexual relations with a patient?" I sneered, irritated. _You know, federal investigators ask you something, you give full cooperation and tell them everything that is of interest. What do people not understand about that? _I get that it doesn't look good to have sex with clients, but it looks much worse to murder them. "Then again, you offered surgery to a minor without first knowing if I was legal or not, so do you even have an ethical code?"

"Sex with patients is frowned upon," Kostov answered with a sigh, and his voice carried to us in the relative quiet of the sidewalk.

"That's why he said the implants were stolen," Booth said to Brennan, except his voice boomed so that he knew for certain Kostov would hear the accusation "There is no way to prove that he was the one who installed them."

"I did not know Rachel was dead when you last visited," Kostov told us with annoyance.

"Rachel, or Sandra?" I asked, glaring at the back of his neck like I could light him on fire if I thought hard enough. "What kind of doctor performs procedures on their patients without first making absolutely sure they had solid documents? Rachel wasn't even her real name, and chances are neither was Sandra!"

"I resent your implications," Kostov told me seriously.

"Who gives a damn about implications? I resent _you_."

"I did not know Rachel was dead when you last visited," he maintained. "Without the knowledge of the ongoing murder investigation, I was not aware that full disclosure would be necessary. I did not kill Rachel. I made her beautiful."

Brennan's mouth opened and she looked at him in horror. "You mean you took what was unique and particular about her, and you destroyed it!"

"You have a serious neurosis on this subject," Kostov told her as his shoulders rose and fell in a long sigh.

"Do you have a boat?" Booth demanded.

Kostov snorted callously. "I do four breast jobs a day, twenty thousand dollars each, in Los Angeles, California. Of _course_ I have a boat. And that is all you'll get without a lawyer." He added as an afterthought.

Booth held out a hand in the stop motion to Brennan and I behind Kostov's back and we stopped walking while he continued, keeping on to his car. "So what do you do, huh?" Booth called to his back in a parting shot. "Pay him in hair plugs?" I rolled my eyes. _Probably true, but lame._

* * *

><p>Warm, sunny stretch of road along a California street, palm trees planted along the median, with a dark blue-black Mustang giving a forensic anthropologist, a federal agent, and a seventeen-year-old a ride. Familiar scene? Well, the federal agent is in the backseat, the anthropologist has claims on shotgun, and the seventeen-year-old is driving. Still sound familiar?<p>

Wind from the rolled-down window made the strands of hair that had escaped my ponytail fly around my face. I had the driver's seat pulled forward slightly to make up for the difference in height between myself and Booth and so that I could see more over the hood of the car. The radio was on but turned down, fading into background noise as we talked, finding possible scenarios. We had no reason good enough for a warrant on any of the people we'd questioned and it seemed now that a lead would be difficult to find. Basically, as much as we hated it, we were at a standstill.

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that my frustration was tempered by cheer that I'd gotten a license?

"Scenario number one," Booth hypothesized. He leaned forward between the front seats, his elbows resting on either one. "Prostitute gets breast augmentation from plastic surgeon in return for sex. She threatens to tell on him."

"Plausible," Brennan nodded shortly, looking out the window unhappily.

"Scenario number two, jealous boyfriend finds out his girlfriend's been having sex with a bunch of other guys and commits a crime of passion, then is sincerely sorry about her death because it hadn't been premeditated, but it had been an accident." I pitched in.

"Exactly," Booth said. One hand pointed at me for a minute. "Which do you like?"

"Neither," Brennan said bluntly.

Booth sighed. "Because there's no real evidence."

"Unless you count a volleyball," Brennan agreed, reminding him of his claim that any volleyball player is capable of murder. "It sounds like you're getting ready to quit," she added, hearing the hint of frustration.

"Quit?" Booth repeated. "No. It's just, the deputy director wants me to hand the case over to the LA field office. We're supposed to give Agent Finn what we've got, and go home, back to our own things." _Which is a lot more dismal for me than it is for you._

"What? No! Forget it," Brennan protested. "You don't even like Agent Finn. You think she's an idiot."

"Bones, the whole case is a bust," Booth exclaimed, throwing his head back and slumping backwards into the seat. "It's a blank! I mean, we don't have anything. We checked her apartment, nothing. There are no pictures, nothing. We don't even know what she looked like. We don't even know her name."

"It's like she lived on the world instead of in it," Brennan agreed, her eyes dulling before she strengthened her resolve in determination. "Cullen is calling us back because he thinks Holly and I have reached a dead end. You have to tell him he's wrong."

"Pull over," Booth ordered firmly.

I sensed the serious turn the conversation had made and when we reached the next wide median, I slowed the car and pulled up to the side of the divider, parking the car but leaving the keys turned in the ignition.

"Is he wrong?" Booth asked, watching Brennan intensely.

Brennan looked away from Booth and frowned at the dashboard. "We know we're looking for someone who grew up in New England and moved here about eight years ago. Her leg was crushed in a car accident when she was thirteen," she slowly listed off.

I took my hands off the steering wheel and rested one hand on my leg and set the other on the edge of the window. "She was on a boat shortly before she was murdered. We know some of her names and some of her faces," I contributed, although I couldn't help but share his frustration and her disappointment.

"But that's all your stuff, okay," Booth said. When I looked off to the side to see Brennan and he, he seemed genuinely upset. "Usually by now we know more about my stuff."

"We have separate stuff?" Brennan asked, sounding hurt.

"Yeah," Booth said, but when she started to look away from him, he hurried to explain. "You do the bone and science stuff and find out what you can about how they died. What sort of weapon was used and how they were attacked. Usually by now I have a feel for the person. What they wanted. How they felt. What was going on with their lives. Holly's sort of in the middle between the two. She gets information and she knows how to use it against the suspects to get us more to work with, and she knows about what you do and she can do that, too. But with this girl, there's nothing."

"She thought she was ugly," Brennan sighed desolately. "She did everything she could to make herself beautiful, and all she did was make herself more invisible."

"Everyone wants to be recognized and people get ashamed of themselves so easily. They want to be remembered for their hair or their clothes or their body. They do what they can to achieve that, but by making themselves the general picture of perfect, they lose what makes them unique and interesting, which makes them easier to forget." I lifted my hand up to support my head, my elbow against the edge of the window. "It's why I dislike uniformity and things like plastic surgery. You're only taking away someone's identity." _Damn, _I thought to myself. _I'd better be careful, or Brennan might start thinking I'm a philosopher._

"Everybody in this city thinks they're ugly, and nobody is." Booth scoffed and turned to glare out the window. "I'm starting to get why you hate anonymous death so much."

"We were born unique. Our experiences mold and change us. We become someone, all of us, and to have that taken away by murder, to be erased from existence against our will, it's just…" Brennan stopped abruptly, turning her face away from Booth and I, rubbing her forehead with her fingers like she had a headache.

"Evil?" Booth suggested.

"Unacceptable," Brennan corrected. "These bones you bring me, I give them a face, we say their names out loud and Holly and my team and I find why they died and how it happened. I return them to their loved ones, and you two go and arrest the bad guy. I like that," she finished sincerely, looking back to Booth and I.

"So do I," I agreed. It's very satisfying to prove to people that no matter what you do, no matter how well you justify it to yourself or how hard you try to cover it up, that murder isn't okay and to force them to own up to what they did. It's rewarding to be able to present people with the information that devastates them, but that I know they'll need in order to accept it and have closure later.

Brennan scowled. "I feel like we should be arresting these doctors, because whether or not they killed her they… they still _erased _her."

"Well, maybe I could… hold off calling for a day," Booth offered with a small smile. I guess he likes it when we have these heartfelt conversations that we'll probably deny we had later.

"It's not good enough," Brennan told him while I put the gear back in drive, getting ready to drive again.

"You're welcome," Booth chuckled.

I pushed down on the gas and pulled away from the curve, then sped up as I resumed driving down the road, glancing at the speedometer once as it hit forty. Brennan's phone rang the generic tone and she got it out from her pocket to answer it, shifting in her seat. She held it to her ear and said, "Brennan," then pulled it away and set it on speakerphone.

Zach started talking on the other end of the line just as Brennan put it on four-person conversation mode. "_The murder weapon is a larger version of the surgical implement used on the victim's jaw."_

"You compared the bones to the marks left on the jaw?" I asked, surprised. I hadn't thought about that, but it made sense. In one of our scenarios, the suspect was the plastic surgeon who'd done the work on her skull, so the marring to her cranium could have come from his instruments, and if it was a crime of passion, he'd have grabbed at whatever was handy. "That's brilliant."

"_It was Hodgins," _Zach corrected. "_Well, Hodgins quoting you, so it was us. Go team!" _I smiled for a few seconds at the hurried exclamation. "_But get this, according to the National Plastic Surgery Association, there's only one surgeon who does this procedure."_

"Tell me he's in LA," Brennan requested, a smile growing on her face as I took the time to glance at her before going back to the road.

"_He's in LA." _The call ended and a second later, Brennan's phone beeped with a text.

Brennan looked at the screen and read what it said to me. "Dr. Henry Atlas, Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills."

I pushed down on the gas a little harder, speeding up a few miles per hour.

* * *

><p>Dr. Henry Atlas's office was peaceful and pretty blank, aside from several framed photos on the wall – one of which, I noted, was of a boat. He sat in the chair behind his desk while Brennan took the chair across from him. Booth and I preferred to stand up so that we could look around and intimidate him.<p>

"I'm ethically bound to ask you for a warrant before revealing the identity of any of my patients," Atlas stated calmly, although his hands were out of view, like he was fiddling with his thumbs or something and didn't want us to see.

"Alright, that's fair," I said with a sigh, moving behind the surgeon in order to lift a finger over my lips to quiet Brennan before she could remind us that we did, in fact, have the warrant already. "So, different question. The jaw procedure that Dr. Brennan described, is that…?"

"My innovations, yes," Atlas nodded. "There is an adage in my business: you can't alter the bone. I've proven it incorrect even to my patients."

I stared down at him. _His goal… had been to mutilate the bone in the first place? _"Why would you even want to?" I breathed, actually unable to understand that in any situation.

"How many have you done?" Brennan demanded, her voice colder, catching what he'd said even though she didn't verbally react to it.

"Perhaps half a dozen," Atlas stated, purposefully being vague. "If you get a warrant, I will release the names of my patients. Otherwise…" he trailed off with a shrug, knowing that he didn't have to vocalize the rest of his sentence.

"Do you use special operating instruments?" Brennan questioned curtly.

"Yes," Atlas answered, his tone even and measured, like he knew that we'd be interested in these instruments in particular. "I designed them myself, specifically for the procedure."

"Have you patented them or shared the design with anyone?" I asked, barely able to look at him without feeling revulsion. It mystified me how someone could do surgery that changed bones just for the sake of changing bones and proving people wrong.

"Not yet."

"He's waiting until he has enough success stories to cash in," Booth accused with a roll of his eyes.

"Well, he's going to be sure of one success story," Brennan sniffed in disdain.

"That's right," Booth agreed, lifting a picture from the file and sliding it onto the desk. "Here we've got a Sandra Cane, Rachel Ashaunce, Candace Hayden." He paused for a moment before asking, "Do any of those ring a bell?"

Atlas sighed heavily like we'd asked him the same thing a thousand times before. "As I have indicated-" he started, irritated.

"Search warrant? Here," Booth interrupted smoothly, tossing the bound file from Brennan's bag on top of Rachel's photograph. "Oh, and to collect your surgical instruments," he added as an afterthought.

"You'll…" Atlas stared at the warrant in horror before looking up at us to protest. I sidled up beside Booth, my arms crossed. "You'll shut me down! You will cost me a fortune!"

"The only ones we require, Dr. Atlas, are the ones you designed yourself," I told him with a glare. "Although, in case it didn't occur to you, if it were necessary to take all of them, we wouldn't particularly care about a glorified beautician with a knife and surgical tools when we're investigating someone's _murder._"

Atlas moved the warrant over to the side and looked down at the picture, upset. "She told me her name was Susan Shepherd." Resignedly, he pushed his chair back far enough to bend over by the drawers. He pulled the lowest one open and then came back up clutching a grey tool box. Tenderly, he set it on the table and opened it up so that we could see how it opened. Inside were the surgical tools he'd designed.

"Brilliant," Brennan said simply.

* * *

><p>Brennan and I took the surgical tools back to the Californian lab and found blocks of molding clay to make imprints of at various angles. We each took several blocks and half of the tools. The pale grey slabs were fun to hit with the tools. I'll admit I probably enjoyed it more than I was supposed to. I mean, the first time I stabbed the clay with one of the silver metal tools, I had a very strong urge to shout, "<em>Who's on top now, bitch?!" <em>but I contained it well with only a smile escaping.

Brennan found the tool that matched the marks on Rachel/Sandra/Candace/Susan's bones. Just our luck, it was one of the last that she tried. We got the warrant to get a forensics team out on the boat and found DNA evidence, and another officer spoke with the people that worked with Henry Atlas and got recorded and written testimonies that there had been an argument. Things were really coming together nicely, so later, when we had Atlas in custody, I was in a much better mood, and therefore I wasn't as inclined to punch him in the face as I had been earlier. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed that we'd be leaving LA soon, but oh, well. We came here to solve a murder, and that's what we've nearly done.

Atlas had his lawyer, a brown-haired and tanned woman in formal wear and a pencil skirt with a light briefcase, with him next to him at the long rectangular table in the police station. Atlas was a lot more worried now than he was before – he had rolled up his shirt sleeves a few times and he seemed flushed.

"We have the murder weapon," Brennan stated, and although she was definitely pleased to have caught a break in the case, her dislike for plastic surgeons hadn't eased any. "We have trace evidence from your boat."

"We have testimony from your staff that you argued with a woman that you knew as Susan Shepherd shortly before she died," Booth added his own information that went along more with FBI than science. While Brennan sat down across from the lawyer, Booth and I were both standing.

"So what you need now is a confession," the lawyer stated calmly, not breaking a sweat. Well, it's good for Atlas that she at least knows what she's doing.

"Yeah, that would be great," I nodded honestly, looking from the lawyer to Booth. "I can go get some paper and a pen, if you're just willing to write it out and not drag out the process," I offered. _I think I'm noticing a trend – the only time I offer to fetch things for people is when I'm trying to help them incriminate themselves. Hm…_

"My client isn't an idiot," the lawyer said with a pointed look at me. "He will not confess to a crime he did not commit."

I shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Booth crossed his arms, playing the tough-cop as he leaned impressively against the doorframe. "Your patient list is what is known as an, uh…" Booth fumbled for a minute, trying to remember the title.

"Letter list?" I suggested, then frowned. "No, that's not right. It's a list with the title "list" and a letter in front of it. Oh, right. A-list," I finally remembered, hitting my forehead lightly in disbelief as to how long it took me to recall that.

"Yeah, an A-list," Booth agreed, snapping his fingers and pointing at me. I smirked. _I love it when I'm right. _"Oscar winners, supermodels, super-agents, moguls. So how is it that a call girl makes the grade?" He asked interrogatively, emphasizing the term "call girl" with thinly-veiled disbelief.

The lawyer looked from Booth to Atlas and folded her hands in her lap, her back stiff and in perfect posture. "You can answer that, Henry."

"I did Susan's procedure pro-bono," Atlas explained quickly.

"Why?" I demanded. "You were striving to alter her bones. You'd better have had a good reason."

"She volunteered," Atlas defended himself, raising his hands up to shoulder height and leaning back in his seat, away from me.

I scoffed and glared at the wall, looking away from the surgeon while Brennan glared straight at him. "She was a guinea pig," she said bluntly and coldly.

"How did you meet her?" Booth asked, which was a good thing, because if he hadn't steered the topic away from dangerous waters then I think Brennan and I would have taken the surgeon's arms, dragged him off of federal grounds, and then beat him senseless. Atlas didn't answer right away; he looked down at the table and rubbed his forehead. "Aw, come on. I mean, Susan didn't just walk right into your office, did she?"

The lawyer sighed quickly and looked at her client in exasperation. "Oh, just tell them, Henry," she advised wearily.

"Through another call girl," Atlas finally answered, looking back up at us. At first, he looked at Brennan, but quickly decided not to when he saw the icy look she directed at him. "One I used regularly. Sometimes these girls from the high-class establishments start to have expectations beyond the professional."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, you know, since when is hiring a prostitute for sex considered professional? Get some perspective. So this other girl thought you were going to marry her?"

Atlas nodded, slightly calmer now that we weren't trying quite so hard to peg him for murder. "Something along those lines, yes. So I made a change, and I started requesting Susan."

"Did you trade plastic surgery for sexual favors?" Brennan asked, shifting and raising her crossed arms to the top of the table.

"Obfuscate, Henry," the lawyer recommended.

"We did each other favors. It went fine for a few months," Atlas confessed.

"Until Susan wanted you to marry her, too," Booth predicted, looking at Atlas for confirmation.

"No," Atlas denied firmly. "In my opinion, Susan was becoming addicted to plastic surgery. I refused to do any more procedures." Well, to be fair, that does fit with what the boyfriend told us before, about Susan being unable to be satisfied with her appearance. "That's what my staff saw us arguing about."

Brennan leveled a cold gaze at him. "What was Susan like?" She asked, and I detected the slightest challenge. It only took me a minute to understand; she was trying to decide whether or not he was to blame for her anonymous death, or whether he had taken the time to learn a bit about the girl he was having sex with.

Atlas shrugged slightly, taken by surprise at the seemingly irrelevant question. "She was the girl next door. Simple, healthy. The girl before Susan was the opposite – very flashy," he added. _There we go. That's a little helpful. _"What she wore was designer – though she didn't wear more than the essentials. She had expensive handbags, diamonds in her incisors, diamonds in her fingernails."

I frowned. Booth caught it, too. "Bones, didn't Hodgins find a fingernail?" He asked the anthropologist.

"Yes," the scientist replied slowly. "With a fake diamond in it."

"Susan was the "girl next door" type," Booth slowly repeated what the plastic surgeon had said.

"It wasn't her fingernail," Brennan said with a small smile growing as they found the next lead.

"Jealously," I mused. "We thought of that but we didn't look past the boyfriend." I looked back at Atlas sharply. "What was the name of the girl before Susan?" I waited a moment but Atlas did not seem inclined to respond. "Come on, man. The flashy one?" I said, using his own words. "You know… wore little fancy things?" I motioned vaguely to my chest. "Bikinis and halter tops and the California beach-girl look? With diamonds in her fingernails?" Booth and Brennan were both looking at me in amusement. I rolled my eyes. Did I really just sound weird enough to stare at?

"Tell them what they need to know, Henry," the lawyer urged.

"Hold on," I said, holding up my hand. _The fingernail wasn't Rachel's. It belonged to another call girl. The one I saw with Booth had red nails and a white spot, like a gem – or a diamond. _"Booth," I looked to the agent. "It was the girl you met with."

* * *

><p>Booth called to arrange a meeting with the call girl he'd met earlier on the roof of our hotel. Brennan and I sat on stools by the bar. I had a glass of ice water while Brennan held a margarita with an olive and a little prop umbrella. We looked across the roof through the people to watch Booth as the girl found him and sat in a red chair across from him with a smile.<p>

"It's hard to believe what people will kill for," I said softly, watching the girl with pity.

"She killed Rachel for the affection of a man who never wanted her to begin with," Brennan agreed. "She made her life worse instead of better, so what was the point to it?"

FBI agents who had been hanging out in the wings came forward to either side of the call girl and she stood up, compliantly holding her hands behind her back while they handcuffed her. For just that moment before the agents took her away from him, the woman leaned toward Booth so her hair brushed his shoulder and she whispered something to him. When she pulled back, looking at him searchingly for an answer, he smiled and nodded, and she let herself be led away.

Booth met with Brennan and I a few minutes later when we strayed from the bar to the edge of the roof. Brennan and I had our hands grazing the top of the rail and we looked out over the city lights, glowing neon in the darkness of the just-passed sunset. "She thought Atlas was going to take her out of that life," Booth said sadly, appearing on the other side of me.

"But he wanted the girl next door," Brennan sighed before reluctantly admitting, "You were right. Jealousy."

"Well, it's an old story," Booth shrugged modestly, stuffing his fists in his pockets. "I bet your fifteen hundred year old friend back home heard a version. Leslie thought Rachel was stealing her man, so she killed her."

"What did she ask you?" I asked suddenly, unable to help my curiosity. What had a murderer asked him to which he'd actually smiled and replied in the affirmative? "She asked you something, right after she was arrested. What was it?"

"She asked me-" Booth paused and his hands came up to the rail, trapping me between the two adults. A soft breeze made my hair lift up around my shoulders and fly across my cheeks before settling again. "She asked me if I thought she was beautiful." We just let that sit for a minute, as none of us seemed to know how to convey what we felt about that with words. "Oh, and I got one more thing. I had the bureau search for adolescent girls that were injured in car crashes in the upper northeast ten to twelve years ago." Booth took one hand away from the rail and reached to his back pocket, unfolding a piece of newspaper and handing it to Brennan. "The daughter's right leg was crushed."

Brennan took the paper and held it down and to the side so that I could read it, too. _Local Woman Killed in Car Crash, Daughter Survives. _"Allison," Brennan breathed, contented that she finally had a true answer, but also saddened by the picture of the pretty little girl in the black-and-white photo who looked nothing like the woman whose murder we'd investigated. "Her name was Allison Holmes."

"Her father and her brother are still alive somewhere in Bangor, Maine," Booth added, knowing that the information wouldn't be in the article. "We will return the remains."

Brennan looked to the FBI agent from the newspaper clipping. "Thanks, Booth," she said sincerely, touched.

"Well, Bones, you do your thing, I do mine," Booth answered with a slight shrug, like that was the answer and it was really all there was to it. "And Holly's in the middle of us."

Brennan looked back at the picture again. "Look at her," she whispered sadly.

"Yeah," Booth agreed, his voice low. "She was a pretty little thing."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Gah! **I'm sorry it took so long to update. School started and time just slipped away from me. But, to make up for it, I'm posting two chapters at once, so enjoy!


	32. The Woman in the Car, Part One

Every other time when Booth had come to get me (aside from when he first arrested me, obviously) it had been lighthearted and friendly. This time, however, that was not the case.

I stood behind the bar, prying open the top of a new, formerly unopened bottle of tequila at around six in the morning, while in front of me and on the bar top was a round, stainless steel tray with several champagne glasses sitting atop it. Two were already filled with brandy, another with Budweiser, and another two with tequila from another, now empty bottle. Helena stood on the other side of the counter, washing up the countertop with a warm and damp cloth while I talked, humoring her questions about how I've been spending my time.

I finally got the cap off and started pouring the tequila into the last glass while I answered her most recent question. "Actually, Agent Booth has jurisdiction over the cases. He has the FBI get warrants and search parties and forensic analysis groups. The Jeffersonian is technically a reputable source of consultants that the FBI utilizes, however their word is taken with confidence. The Jeffersonian can't do anything requiring legal aid without Agent Booth." I punctuated the end of my sentence with perfect timing as I set the tequila bottle on the bar, capped it, and lifted up the tray, balancing it with one hand under the bottom. I raised it up without shaking. This job is great for improving balance and coordination, if nothing else.

I carried the tray over to the correct table when Booth barged in the doors. The bell above dinged (lame security precaution so that the employees know if someone comes in) and he didn't waste any time before he marched over to me.

I held up the tray with one hand and started to pass out drinks with the other. "I'm sorry, sir," I said with a perfectly straight face as I set a glass of brandy in front of one of the men. "We do not accept strangers leering over our employees. If you do not calm down, I will be forced to punch you in the face."

The moment I had the last alcoholic drink out of my hands, Booth reached out and took the hood of my sweater, pulling me back towards the bar. I was slightly alarmed – he was being really out of character, and it scared me a little that he was tugging me around – but he hasn't ever given me a reason not to trust him, so I'm not going to freak out and actually punch him. _Jesus, it was just a joke. _I set the tray down on the countertop.

"Dude, what's wrong?" I asked nervously. "I mean, it was a joke. You don't have to manhandle me." He was quiet and just gave a glare to Helena, until the younger girl nodded, realizing Booth wanted some privacy and she moved to go back in the "employees only" section. "Booth, really, you're starting to freak me out," I said, my breathing actually picking up.

Booth seemed like he hadn't actually put too much thought into what he was doing. He looked surprised at himself and let go of my sweater. "Sorry, kid," he said shortly before getting straight to business. "Look, there's another case that's urgent, high priority. If you don't want in, that's fine, but if you do we have to leave now because, as I already said, it's _urgent._" He tapped his fingers on the countertop to accentuate his point.

"I'm in," I said immediately, although I was slightly bewildered. What could be more urgent that the Howard Epps case, when we were racing against a clock to be sure an innocent man wasn't going to be killed? (Well, of course, he didn't turn out innocent, but it's the thought that counts.) "What's up on this one? Is Cullen even going to be okay with me in a high-profile case? What kind of "urgent" is it?" I asked quickly, immediately trying to figure out where I'd stand with this one.

Booth seemed seriously bothered by this case, and he simply closed his eyes, sighed, and nodded at my questions. "Look... we're going to pick up Bones at her office, and then we'll go to the crime scene. After all you've done in work for the bureau, Cullen won't object. On this one we want all the help we can get. And as for the urgency…" He seemed like he was struggling to accept what this case was about, and didn't want to say it out loud. "You'll see when we get to the crime scene," he promised.

I waved at Helena and pointed at Booth before letting him pull me out, knowing Andy would get notified by the FBI again. As I slid into the front seat of his van, I sucked on the inside of my cheek with anxiety. What was so bad about this case that Booth didn't even want to say it?

* * *

><p>I walked into Brennan's office. A woman and a man holding a camera were on the couch opposite from Brennan, who sat in her chair, but I didn't really think about it much, too concerned and worried about the new case. I'd run through many scenarios in my head and decided that if it was more high-priority than pro bono work on a death penalty case, then there was probably someone still alive, unaccounted for, and in danger.<p>

I walked right into the office, knocking quickly on the door as I passed. "Dr. Brennan," I greeted swiftly, getting to business. I mean, if she's talking to people who had visitors' badges on their clothes, and Booth already called ahead to say he would pick her up, then clearly it can't be too important. "Booth's here. He picked me up on the way. We're going to the crime scene?"

The man with the camera turned slightly towards me and the woman looked from Brennan to I with a surprised expression. "Hello. Who's this?"

I blinked, unsure how to introduce myself, but luckily for me Brennan did it for me. "This is my coworker Holly. She's a consultant for the FBI and the Jeffersonian." I smiled slightly to myself. _Aw! We're coworkers!_

"It must be brilliant to work with the Jeffersonian and the FBI," the woman said, turning slightly and folding her hands in her lap as she spoke to me. Something about the way she spoke brought up the alarms in my head and then I realized the man with the camera was more than looking at me; he was watching me through the camera. "What's it like?"

"It's awesome," I said distantly, peering at the cameraman. "Excuse me, is that thing on? Are you filming?"

"We're live," the reporter said with a nod and a slight smile. She clearly thought I would think this was awesome, as well.

I glared, taken aback, and took a staggering step backwards. "Excuse you!" I yelled indignantly, glaring at the camera. "Turn that thing away from me! I didn't sign a media release contract, you are violating my constitutional rights! I should file a lawsuit! _Agent Booth!_" I waited a minute and looked out of the office window. Booth was shaking his head at me apologetically and mouthing the words, _I'm not crashing a live interview._

The camera just kept watching me, although the cameraman seemed deterred by my threats, as he looked to the reporter in confusion. "Ugh!" I shouted, stomping my foot angrily, turning around, and running out of the office. _So much for staying out of the media!_

* * *

><p>I had pouted and sulked the whole ride to the crime scene, still a bit indignant that Booth hadn't at least threatened the cameraman and the reporter for violating my rights (because, without my consent for public viewing of films of me, they were). But when we got there, I was pretty much over it, having thought it over and deciding that it was better for Booth that he hadn't made a spectacle, and at least now the media would know I wasn't afraid of having a bitch fit and storming away.<p>

The moment I stepped out of the van, the interview was definitely not tagged with "priority" in my mind. I closed the van door and looked at the scene, unsettled. A sort of SUV or something was crashed into a tree just off of a local road. The hood of the car was decimated, crushed inwards by the tree. The van looked scorched. The paint was blackened and peeling, and little flakes were on the ground around the car. Sirens were still going off, and police were ordering people to take detours around the scene when they drove by. Yellow crime scene tape sectioned off the van, tree, and the short patch of road that they deemed important.

"So," I said, frowning at the car and rubbing my hands on the thighs of my jeans, trying to dissolve some unease. "Crashed and scorched or scorched and crashed?" I asked, looking at Booth inquisitively.

"State troopers called in the fire department to put out a burning car," Booth explained, pointing at the van with one hand, the other in his pocket. "They found a body in the driver's seat. License plate and V.I.N. are missing."

"So someone went to lengths to obscure the identity of the body," I concluded.

"Why is the FBI involved?" Brennan asked. She held out a pair of white latex gloves for me and I took them quickly so she could get her own on. She lifted her feet up high in the longer grass off of the road as we went towards the car.

Booth took a deep breath before answering this time and I looked up at him sharply. Whatever the answer was, it was likely why this qualified as a high-profile case. "One burned backpack… child-sized sneaker, plus the right side of her seat belt went missing. Sliced away." He said, all in one, hurried breath, looking away from the van as Brennan reached the driver's side window and looked inside. I could just barely see the charred cranium from my angle.

I softened my expression deliberately and looked at the obviously frustrated FBI agent sympathetically. "You think it's a kidnapping," I said, stating it so that he wouldn't have to elaborate for Brennan. I knew that any case involving endangered children would be difficult for him to keep calm with; I hadn't forgotten about the sweet four-year-old child I'd met who idolized his father as a hero.

Although I'd probably jump off of a cliff before I admitted it out loud, the past few days since I met Parker, I've been thinking about that photograph Booth had taken of Parker and I before I slept. It was calming and it helped me to forget about Epps and Edward Nelson and Randall Hall and the Costellos right before I had to dream. Admittedly, the nightmares come easier when I have that firsthand experience with killers to dwell on, but I don't think it makes my gig as a consultant any less worth it.

"I have to act that way," Booth said firmly, taking me out of my thoughts. "The first forty-eight hours after a child abduction are crucial. That's why you're both here. If you identify that victim, then you tell me what kid I'm looking for."

"Right," I said, steeling my thoughts from wandering back to Booth's son. I looked up and around at the crime scene team around us, thinking through what I knew of abduction cases and realizing why this was really so urgent.

Brennan declared the skeleton in the driver's seat a woman while I moved around the car and into view of most all of the officers here. I raised my hands above my head, waving my arms slightly and getting attention. "Hey, listen up!" I yelled, summoning as much authority as I could (and it probably wasn't much, considering the slight nerves I got when I had about half a dozen FBI forensics people watching me curiously), but not many people actually paid attention to me.

Booth wandered over to one of the forensics vans while I tried in vain to yell loud enough to get the attention of everyone at the admittedly spacey crime scene while they were busy talking through radios or conversing with each other or just plain absorbed in their work. After the fourth time I yelled and I didn't get the amount of attention I wanted, I sulked and kicked the dust. It's not like I'm doing it just to screw around; I'm trying to get a kid home safely!

Booth came back with his hands behind his back and held something out wordlessly. My eyes lit up brightly and I gasped, snatching the megaphone from him. Well, I guess it must be in the crime scene team's equipment in case they have a large crime scene to cover. I grinned, tapping it lightly and hearing the slight echo, and then held it up. "_Everyone shut up and start listening!" _I yelled experimentally, and a second later all eyes were on me and I swear I could have heard a pen drop. I looked over at Booth with a grin and he had his hands over his ears. Brennan looked up from over the hood of the car and she was glaring at Booth.

Glancing from one to the other, I tried to guess why they both seemed like some sort of natural disaster was coming.

Oh, right. I'm Holly Kirkland and Booth just gave me a megaphone. Well, that explains it.

"We need stills of the entire scene, first without flash so the entomological evidence isn't compromised!" I started. My mind raced as I thought about everything that could possibly help and I just continued. Booth wasn't exactly stopping me. "I want the license plate taken back to the FBI labs and I want a best attempt at reconstruction along with a chemical attempt to raise the letters! I want people going through missing persons reports, missing vehicle reports, school reports for any children not in attendance and unexcused today!"

I continued to list off anything and everything that I could think of for the next sixty seconds until I'd run out of ideas. To my surprise, the forensics teams seemed to actually be listening to me and several of them nodded when I said something that pertained to their field of expertise. When I finally finished, no one looked away for a minute until I raised the megaphone and said in a much quieter voice, "That is all."

I lowered the megaphone with a content smile and then said to myself with a satisfied nod, "I think I'll keep this with me while we're at this scene. It's useful."

"I really don't think that's necessary," Booth tried to dissuade me quickly.

"I think it is."

I kept the megaphone nearby me, but to my disappointment I didn't actually find a need to use it again. I helped Brennan with what I could and when it was time to leave, I gave the FBI team the address to the Jeffersonian while Brennan packed up her equipment and got in the car.

On my way to the van, Booth motioned me over to him by the driver's side. "Hey, are you alright?" He asked quietly, sounding genuinely concerned. "You don't usually take charge like that. I just thought I'd make sure that you didn't notice anything wrong."

My attitude dulled and I swallowed. I looked over to the burnt and crashed van for a moment before looking at Booth with a firmed resolve. "The chances are, there's a child who is scared and hurt somewhere," I whispered, and I reached up with one hand to push my hair out of my face. "I understand I don't have any real authority here, but I have to do what I can. If I'm overstepping any boundaries, then I'm sorry, it's really not my intention. But I just…" I trailed off for a moment before starting again. "My rights don't matter to me right now. My consequences don't matter so long as there's a chance of finding the child alive. Most children who die by the hand of their kidnappers are killed in the first twenty-four hours. Seventy-five percent of those children are killed in the first three hours, and of that group, forty-four percent are dead within the first sixty minutes."

My throat felt dry as I listed off the statistics, letting them roll off of my tongue like they were second nature. "You were right about me not wanting to be a barmaid. I wanted to help people who were hurt or in danger and I wanted to punish the people who caused it. I don't want this case to end with me standing over the dead body of another victim."

Booth nodded empathetically by the time I finished speaking. "You're a good kid, you know that?" He told me. I didn't answer, just shrugged. _Whatever you say. _I walked back around the car and pulled back the door, getting in the backseat while Booth put the car into gear.

* * *

><p>"Shoe size four." Zach held the child's sneaker lower and set it in the steel evidence tray that the child's belongings had been placed in. He pointed to the charred remains of a little bag that looked like it had once been used as a school backpack. "That's a school bag, but the contents are burned beyond recognition."<p>

Brennan stepped up the platform, snapping the latex gloves around her wrists and straightening them. "What about the human remains?"

"The victim was female, as you said at the crime scene," I said with a nod towards the exam table, holding my own gloved hands away from my body. "The skull shows Caucasoid as well as Mongoloid features." _Mixed race._

"Also," Zach added, crossing from the table with the evidence to the side of the exam table, stepping up next to me. "Pre-auricular sulcus to the pelvis shows the victim gave birth five to eight years ago."

"The kidnapping victim could be her child," Brennan sighed, looking over the skeleton with a gaze of sadness.

There were a few seconds where no one said anything. Zach seemed like he hadn't wanted to think about the child and Brennan was probably even more sad about it, now that she'd said something about it out loud. I balled my hands into fists, biting at the inside of my cheek and looking over the smoky, mostly skeletal remains.

"The maxillary molars have been pulled and replaced with removable dentures," Zach started awkwardly, turning the focus of the investigation back to the skeleton. I took a few steps back so that he could pass me to the front of the exam table. He reached into the mouth (the cranium and mandible were being held together by blackened sinew) and gently pulled the dentures from around the teeth. "There's lots of gold."

"In parts of the Caucasus, when girls from wealthy families turn sixteen, they are given gold teeth to display their affluence," Brennan stated, very matter-of-fact in her note. She looked over the dentures for a moment before she carefully pried the mandible further away from the top row of teeth.

"I'll dissolve a bicuspid in nitric acid and do a chemical workup," Zach volunteered, setting the dentures in a smaller evidence tray and setting it off to the side, on the table with the microscope.

"There's something lodged in the larynx," Brennan noted, bent over the skull, her voice gaining the slightly distant tone it had when she was focusing on something else. She reached for some tweezers.

I made a face. "Part of her tongue?" I suggested. It was possible that the muscle tissue of her tongue hadn't been completely decimated by the fire, protected by her bones.

Brennan slowly pulled the flesh out of her throat with the tweezers, holding it up and bringing an evidence dish under it, setting it down in the dish and staring at it speculatively. "It's not fleshy enough for tongue. This is cartilage."

"Oh, lovely," I said sarcastically.

"I don't understand how this is lovely."

"It's sarcasm, Zach."

Dr. Goodman walked into the lab, but didn't come up onto the platform. He had his hands clasped in front of him and was leading a blonde woman behind him. I looked up as they entered and waved at Hodgins, who came in behind them a second later from the chemistry lab. "Hey, Hodgins, Dr. Goodman, and guest."

"Dr. Brennan, Mr. Addy, Dr. Hodgins, Miss Kirkland," Goodman nodded in kind acknowledgement. He stepped to the side and made a wide gesture to his friend. She was tall and blonde, with fair skin and European features. She wore a pencil-grey skirt and a business jacket over a white blouse that was buttoned up all the way and tucked into the waistline of her skirt. "This is Miss Pickering. She's performing a security review for the state department on _everyone _working on the Jeffersonian's cases." I am definitely not imagining the look he's giving me.

Hodgins gave that silly, lopsided grin that he usually wore before saying something paranoid. "One man's security review is another man's witch hunt," he said, swiping his security card and stepping up onto the platform.

Pickering gave Hodgins a weary and skeptical look, nodding her head once sharply and looking to Dr. Goodman. "That would be Dr. Jack Hodgins."

Goodman sighed. "It would be, yes."

"Aw, look at that, Hodgins!" I said with faux cheerfulness. It was impossible to actually enjoy myself with the fear of finding a child dead because of something he had nothing to do with – because his parents couldn't make smarter choices for him. "Your reputation precedes you!"

Hodgins tilted his head at her, snapping the latex gloves around his wrist and wincing only slightly when it hurt. _Well, what were you expecting?! _"You know us all, don't you, Miss Pickering?" I rolled my eyes only slightly at his conspiracy theorist mode. "Or is it "Agent" Pickering, from the National Security Agency?"

"I don't yet know you as well as I will, Dr. Hodgins," Pickering assured him with a clearly forced smile. Her smile evaporated as she noticed something and her expression changed to alarm. "Is something burning?"

I smiled only slightly and nodded to the side, at the smoked corpse. "Not anymore." I said with a shrug. "She's been pretty much extinguished by now." Pickering's attention snapped to me and she observed me critically, her eyes lingering on the gloves on my hands and the long-sleeved sweater.

"Miss Pickering will require a few minutes of everyone's time to perform a routine security review," Goodman explained seriously. "I expect everyone to be cooperative."

I raised my hand slightly. "I'll be cooperative so long as she doesn't insult me."

Hodgins crossed his arms and snorted derisively. "I'm not swearing any damn loyalty oath," he declared.

Goodman looked taken aback and fixed Hodgins with a cool look. "And civil!" He added, specifically for the entomologist.

Brennan put the top over the flesh from the victim's throat and held it out to Zach. "Send this to Dr. Chen in pathology. Ask him to identify it as soon as possible," she instructed quickly before bending over the bones again.

Goodman cleared his throat loudly. "Dr. Brennan?"

"Yes. Security check, civil," Brennan said, brushing it off and not paying too much attention. She looked up from the arm of the dead woman and to Hodgins. "Zach will grind a segment of the femur so you can perform trace element analysis." Hodgins nodded to show he'd heard.

"Didn't I see you on television this morning, Dr. Brennan?" Pickering asked without warning, cocking her head at Brennan quizzically.

Brennan fixed her with a puzzled stare. "How could I possibly know what you watched on television?" She looked behind Pickering at the opening doors of the Medico-Legal lab and I could practically see the thoughts of the security detail flying out the window. "Booth! I have to talk to you!"

"Yeah, it was definitely her," Pickering said to Goodman with a tense sigh.

"Hey," I interjected, slightly defensively on Brennan's behalf. "You don't have to sound so disappointed."

Pickering tilted her head at me, her eyes sharpening again as she became suddenly business-like. "What are your qualifications to work at the Jeffersonian? I have not been informed of the presence of a child."

I peeled the latex gloves from my hands and threw them in the waste basket at the side of the security system installment by the stairs. "I'm not a child," I stated coldly, irked. "I'm a consultant of the FBI and Dr. Brennan has requested my assistance on several cases. I'm seventeen and perfectly capable."

Pickering raised her eyebrows. "Then why did you run away from the cameras like they were going to attack?" She asked, clearly not convinced.

I waved to Goodman in exasperation, stepping down the stairs of the platform and going off to meet Brennan and Booth. "I don't like being on film," I answered. "If you really want proof that I'm allowed here, ask Dr. Goodman."

Behind my back, I heard Goodman quietly advise the woman, "You might want to work your way up to Dr. Brennan and Miss Kirkland."

* * *

><p>Brennan and Booth walked up the stairs to the second level of the Medico-Legal lab and Brennan grazed her hand over the railing overlooking the platform while she walked. I followed behind them, looking down at Pickering curiously. I wasn't sure how to feel about having a security review done on me… But Pickering seems fairly harmless.<p>

"How close are you to identifying the victim?" Booth asked.

"I may be jumping the gun, but-" Brennan started, admitting that she wasn't certain before she stated anything, but she was interrupted.

"That's music to my ears," Booth said half-seriously.

Brennan huffed before resuming. "Considering this forty-eight hour thing, we should be looking at Eastern European immigrants going back ten years."

"I can get that information for you." Booth said, his voice relaxing now that he had something to do. "Is Angela doing a facial reconstruction?"

"Yes," Brennan said as she got to the top of the stairs, taking a long stride to pass over the top step and begin walking along the balcony towards Angela's office.

"You know, if this works, I'm going to buy you a puppy," Booth promised. I snickered at that; Brennan with a puppy? That's funny.

Brennan apparently had the same thoughts. "That would be inadvisable," she denied shortly before continuing with, "You never told me how I was this morning. I asked, "How did I do?" and you said, "We'll talk about it in the car." But we never did."

Booth shoved his hands in his pockets again. "Was it your first TV interview?" He ventured hesitantly.

"Yes," Brennan answered, her frown deepening.

"It was fine," Booth hurried to say with a nod. "You know, for your first interview."

Brennan's face fell. "That was a qualified response!" She protested, her shoulders sinking.

"What?" Booth asked, before quickly denying it. "No! It was – It was lively." He turned in to Angela's office, passing through the open door quickly and taking a lead in front of Brennan, who followed, scowling at his back. I followed behind the anthropologist, suddenly hoping that I wouldn't get brought into the conversation.

"Lively? What kind of word is that?" She demanded.

"It's an adjective," Booth answered with a little, nervous smile. "Though, ironically, most words that end in a Y are adverbs, like "ironically.""

Brennan let her arms fall to her sides in disappointment and frustration. "Okay. What did I do wrong?" She asked.

Booth seemed relieved that she wasn't releasing fury on him. "Next time, tell a funny story!" He advised. "Oh, and never, _never _say you don't like children."

"You said you don't like children?" I repeated, cringing and covering my mouth with my hand when I realized I'd spoken out loud. "Oh. Sorry. I'm not here."

"I didn't say I don't like children," Brennan corrected me, her voice slightly higher than normal in her aggravation. "I just said I don't want any!"

"On TV, it's the same thing," Booth groused, stopping just in front of the holograph machine. Angela stood on the other side of it, holding her control pad in one hand and the stylus in the other, watching the two with raised eyebrows and sparkling eyes, but she didn't ask.

Angela didn't wait for any prompting. "The victim's skull was in good shape. There was no real shrinkage from the fire, so I'm running a comparison between the facial reconstruction and the photos in the immigration database." She looked from the computer behind her, which was displaying several faces in several rows as red and green lines ran over them, trying to compute a match. "So, I hear we're all going to get grilled by some mysterious government chick."

"I've been through this before," Brennan said dismissively, still crestfallen about Booth's opinion of her interview. "It's so we can work on classified cases – CIA, military."

"So why does she want to make a profile on me?" I asked, scowling and kicking lightly at the carpet with the toe of my shoe.

"If you want to stay working with us, then you'll probably be around for one," Brennan said, walking over to the computer to watch the program scan the various faces. "There isn't usually much warning before we get one."

"Why are you worried? Do you have something to hide?" Booth asked, only half-serious as he smirked at Angela.

Angela returned the playful banter, looking up at him slyly. "You'd better believe it."

"What kind of something?"

"The _best _kind."

I rolled my eyes as Brennan surveyed the computer screen before suddenly pointing at the monitor. "There!" She exclaimed with excitement. "That one!"

Angela looked away from Booth and walked over to the computer to stand beside Brennan, bringing the stylus to the touch pad. Her heels clicked on the linoleum. "Okay," she mumbled, stopping the program, isolating that picture, and pulling the file up on the screen.

"It's a good match," Brennan said with a decisive nod, proud of herself for seeing it.

Booth and I exchanged a look before silently agreeing to go look over their shoulders. Angela scrolled down with her stylus and the monitor on the computer showed the picture before moving down to the information. Angela read it off of the computer smoothly. "Paulina Rosalina Semov, born in 1970 in Cherdyn, Perm District of the Urals. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1994 with her sister, Maria. She married Carl Decker… they live in Cleveland Park."

"Children?" Booth asked her, looking over his shoulder at the open door briefly before turning back to the screen.

Angela nodded and sighed, closing her eyes for a minute, raising her hand to brush some of her hair out of her face. She took a minute to answer vocally, and during that time, Brennan and I were tactfully patient, both of us understanding that endangered children was extremely difficult for the emotionally-sensitive artist and the father. "…Donovan Dimitri Decker, born 1997. He's eight years old."

"This is good," I said, giving Angela a look of reassurance. "We know which child we're looking for. Eight-year-old Donovan Decker. The FBI can pull records and we can get leads based on motives, for who would have wanted to abduct him." I softened my voice, disappointed that Angela didn't really seem too enthused. "We'll find him," I promised. "And if he's not okay when we do find him, then I'll make damn sure we get whoever hurt him in prison for life."

* * *

><p>Brennan looked out the window of the passenger's seat of Booth's FBI van, resting her chin on her knuckles while her elbow was on the edge of the window. Booth drove in the front while I sat in back, behind Booth's seat and across from the car seat behind Brennan. I glanced over at it occasionally. It was making me feel… <em>domesticated,<em> which I wasn't sure I liked, so I was trying to ignore the offending object.

"Paulina and Carl separated three months ago, so there are separate addresses for Mom and Dad," Brennan said sourly.

"Well, we know that Mom is in a drawer back in your lab," Booth said, his hands tightening for a moment around the wheel. "Let's go find Dad."

_Wow. You guys are sure optimistic,_ I thought to myself sarcastically, even though I wasn't actually too surprised that they weren't all rainbows and cheer. "So, Booth, did you arrest someone really small recently? Like, "small" as in the size of the dwarf from that old _Bad Santa _movie?" I asked conversationally, unable to ignore the car seat anymore. Besides, I felt like it was important to talk about something less depressing.

"I had Parker the few days before we went to LA," Booth explained, and I was kind of pleased to hear his tone warm up when he mentioned his son. "I didn't get the time since to take out the car seat."

Brennan shook her head, staring out the window at the trees that we passed. "I don't know how you do that," she stated glumly.

Booth glanced over at her, raising his eyebrows. "Install a car seat in an FBI vehicle?"

Brennan shook her head vehemently and I got the sinking feeling that we would be going right back to upsetting topics of conversation. "Bring a kid into this world, knowing what you know. I'll bet Parker was an accident, right?" Brennan looked away from the window and to Booth. My jaw dropped and I let my head fall forward, covering my face with my hands. _Oh… my… God. I can't believe she just said that. I know she doesn't have bad intentions, but… Christ, that's ridiculous. _"Because his mother wouldn't marry you?" Booth's knuckles began to turn white as he clenched onto the steering wheel tightly. "What?"

"It never occurred to you that that might be a sensitive topic?" Booth demanded through grit teeth.

"Well, you could've gone with the "very small felon" story," she said with a shrug, looking back out the window.

"It's _better _for Parker being in the world," Booth said with an edge. "Someday, you'll see that."

"I won't."

"You'll change your mind."

"I don't do that."

"You will," Booth insisted.

"Yeah," Brennan agreed, irritated. "Maybe after I see how Decker reacts when you tell him that his wife is dead and his child has been kidnapped!" She snapped.

In spite of the quip, Booth was calming down. His grasp on the steering wheel was relaxing and his voice was no longer sounding so controlled and edgy. "Well, statistically speaking, we're going to find Donovan with his dad," he pointed out.

"It's true," I backed him up with a slight half-shrug. "Most kidnappings are committed by the estranged parents."

Brennan rolled her eyes and stared out the window again, steadfastly refusing to agree that Booth's life was better simply because Parker _existed. _I don't mean that to sound cold – I know she acknowledges that Parker makes Booth happy, but I think she's of the opinion that if Parker had never existed to begin with, Booth's quality of life wouldn't be hurt by it - not because Booth wouldn't care, but because you can't miss what you've never had. "You're certainly making the whole domestic scene more and more attractive."

We passed the rest of the ride in uncomfortable silence until Booth turned around the corner of a small but respectable neighborhood and pulled over to the side of the street, slowing the van to a stop.

"This is it?" Brennan asked, craning her neck to look around Booth and see the house. It seemed peaceful – cleanly-cut yard, painted a light blue and with white shingles and an off-white gutter pipe along the roof, leading down around to the back. The concrete walkway up to the wide porch had the vegetation trimmed away from it, and orchid pots sat on either side of the stairs leading up the porch that spanned the entire width of the house. The door was in the center and on either side there were windows looking in. I opened my door, jumped out of the vehicle, and closed the door lightly, careful not to make too much noise and disrupt the neighborhood.

"Yes," Booth answered, locking the car with a beep and starting to cross the mostly-empty street. The only other cars were in driveways, save for a black SUV parked a little ways in front of Booth's van. "You just hang back and let us do the talking," he told Brennan, and I shot him a look that clearly expressed that I wanted to be left out of their little lover's spat. _I mean, seriously, just get a dog. It's like a compromise. _Booth strode up the walkway to the door and knocked quickly, several times in rapid succession. "Mr. Decker!" He called. Brennan passed him and moved to the window to the left side of the porch. 'Bones, what are you doing?"

"What?" She asked, bending over and looking through the curtains to the inside. "Oh, it's tidy, Spartan even!" She stated, her voice conveying surprise even though it was slightly muffled because she wasn't looking up at us. "Is that normal for a recently separated man?"

I scoffed. "Clean and tidy isn't normal for _any _man, let alone one with marital issues." I glanced over at Booth, suddenly remembering that we were in the company of a man. "Oh, uh, no offense." I looked over at the SUV parked in front of Booth's van again. Something about it just seemed wrong. I leaned over the railing to look at it from another angle to see the license plate to see what state it was from. _Maybe it doesn't even belong here_. Unfortunately for me, it had no license plate. _Damn. That can't mean anything good. _"Booth," I called softly.

Brennan didn't hear me. She was describing what she saw inside with a tone of shock. "There's no TV, no magazines, no art, no stereo." Meanwhile, Booth listened to me and came over by me, looking at me questioningly. I pointed over at the back of the SUV and Booth inclined his chin slightly to show he noticed the lack of plates. "There's dust on everything." Movement caught my eye and I snapped my neck to look at the front window of the SUV. A pair of binoculars was moving back inside the car. I narrowed my eyes and Booth didn't say anything, just started walking off of the porch and down the concrete walkway. "I don't think he's been here in a while –wait, where are you going?"

The SUV's engine started and Booth started jogging, reaching for his gun with his dominant hand. "Wait here!" I yelled to Brennan, placing both hands on the porch's railing and jumping up, swinging my legs over the side and falling down to the yard. I turned around, pushing off against the porch and setting off in a dead run after the car as it started moving.

"Son of a bitch!" Booth cursed loudly, catching up with the SUV before I did. He slammed the side of his gun against the window, which shattered inwards. I moved around the car to the other side and yanked open the door, grabbing the man in black garb by his collar and dragging him out. I managed to get him onto the sidewalk before I realized he was armed. Around the car I heard the sounds of a scuffle as Booth forced the driver out of the car and onto the ground.

"They're armed!" I warned when I heard the click, and I let go of the one I'd been manhandling when I felt the clothes start to twist as he turned. I let my legs buckle and I fell to the ground just before a shot rang out. I rolled over quickly, knowing that I didn't stand much chance against a man with a gun, and rolled off of the pavement and onto the road. I covered my face with my hands as I rolled under the SUV while more shots were fired. Once I felt sunlight on my skin again, I pushed up to my knees and jumped onto the unsuspecting driver who had been firing at Booth.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, digging the heels of my shoes against his his stomach, and that combined with the sudden weight forced him to double over. With one arm I kept him in a stranglehold, and with the other I reached for the arm that had the gun and pulled his hand up so if he shot, no one would get hurt. The other man fired his gun again, but no stabbing pain flared out and no one screamed, so I assume he missed.

The man I was on backed up suddenly, crushing me against the SUV in an attempt to make me let go. I grunted, but held on. Unfortunately, he was not so lucky. Since he'd straightened his back so I'd get the brunt of the blow, he couldn't bend over again. His knees collapsed and as he fell forward onto the ground, I wrested the gun away from him and stood up from over him, jumping away so he couldn't grab at my legs. I backed up away from them both and to Booth's side, and the two of us pointed the firearms at the other two.

"Booth! Holly!" Brennan shouted, rushing down the concrete path from the porch.

"Stay where you are!" I ordered, seeing the man I'd initially attacked and who'd tried to make a hole in my stomach eyeing her and raising his gun. I pointed the gun I'd stolen at the second man while the first scrambled to his knees, one hand raised to his throat where I'd strangled him. The still armed man paused as I pressed my finger over the trigger threateningly, not afraid of shooting him the way he'd tried to shoot me. "If you fire any more shots we'll shoot you! Come on, it's two against one! Be reasonable and surrender!" I commanded, my chest heaving as I took deep breaths. _Ow. That's the worst fight I've been in in a long time._

Brennan stopped, looking on anxiously while the still armed man looked at both of the weapons trained on him before making the smart decision. He tossed the gun on the ground and raised his hand behind his head.

"FBI," Booth stated sharply, glaring coldly at the two.

"U.S. Marshals," the one that had just thrown his gun yelled back.

Booth froze. "U.S. Marshals?" He repeated, like he thought he'd heard wrong.

Brennan raised her hands up. "Forensic anthropologist!" She called, before adding, "That's why no gun."

I took my finger off of the trigger and lowered the stolen firearm. "What the hell is your problem, man?!" I screamed, infuriated. "I'm a _minor_ and you tried to fucking _shoot _me in the _God damn chest!_ You're sick! U.S. Marshals – you tried to kill me! That is a little thing called _murder _and it's _illegal _ and aside from that it's just more than a little rude!"


	33. The Woman in the Car, Part Two

Booth, Brennan, and I all sat in front of deputy director Cullen's desk while he stood over us from the other side, looking down on us and surveying the situation critically. Booth and Brennan both kept their heads down, but I didn't see any reason to. Yes, he's a powerful man, as the deputy director, but we weren't in the wrong. Hey, I'm the _minor _that was nearly _murdered_ by someone in the _government _while investigating a _homicide and kidnapping. _I don't need to get scolded for self-defense.

"Well, at least nobody got shot," Cullen groused, dragging his hand down his face in apparent misery. "Probably because she didn't get a gun 'til the end of it," he added, pointing at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Really? We're _still _not over that? He was trying to light us on _fire_!"

"Sir, why is Carl Decker's home being watched by U.S. Marshals?" Booth asked, lifting his gaze from the ground to his boss now that the lectures were over. _Yes, let's move on to the important things now._

Cullen rolled his eyes. Clearly, we weren't quite grasping how stupid it was to attack U.S. Marshals, even though we had no way of knowing who they were until they'd already tried to _kill _me! Nevertheless, he answered the question, probably having known it was coming around sooner or later. "Carl Decker's a federal witness under witness protection. He's scheduled to appear before a grand jury in two days."

"Is it a mob thing?" I asked, training my eyes on the director as he began to settle down. Even though he wasn't as tense as he'd been when we'd been escorted in, he wasn't comfy enough to sit down and act like a normal person.

"Decker designs body armor for K.B.C. Systems," Cullen started to explain, not looking directly at me. _He should be ashamed he yelled at an attempted murder victim. _I vaguely recognized the company name, but just well enough to know that they designed outfits for soldiers. "He says they knowingly sent defective armor to Iraq." Oh. Well, that's pretty serious. "Justice department believes him, so they moved him to a safe house."

"Does the justice department think that Decker is in danger from the company?" Brennan asked with a little scoff.

"He thinks he is," Cullen said with a little, irritated shrug. "They want him to testify, so they play along.

"Does Decker know that his wife has been killed and his child has been kidnapped?" Booth asked, a little edge developing in his voice.

"No," Cullen said firmly. "And they don't want him to know."

"Why?" Brennan demanded incredulously.

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. "Because K.B.C. Systems involves war and mercenaries and U.S. Marshals. If they think they're going to go under, they're going to do whatever they can to keep Decker from testifying. Abducting his child is a surefire way of keeping him quiet, out of fear for his son's life. This case just got a hell of a lot more complicated and dangerous."

"From their point of view, there's nothing to be gained from him knowing," Cullen agreed with me for possibly the first time ever. _I should get a card later at Hallmark to commemorate this day._

I stood up from my chair so suddenly that it scraped against the carpet and was pushed back behind me. "Except maybe Decker chooses not to testify, and they don't torture and murder his child! Shouldn't that be his choice, as the father of the kid that is in serious danger?" I demanded, nearly yelling. I understand why the government makes these sorts of decisions in principle; but in practice, it's so inhuman it's infuriating.

"The justice estimates that K.B.C. Systems is directly responsible for thirty deaths and hundreds of injuries," Cullen argued against me coldly. "They're taking a larger view. It's complicated."

"His wife is dead, and his child is missing," Booth interrupted, taking my side. "That's really not so complicated, sir."

"No one is stopping you from investigating those crimes," Cullen said, spreading his arms like he was showing he was defenseless.

"He's a material witness. I need access to him."

Cullen stared down at Booth. He was determined not to relent or give in on this one. "We know Decker didn't kill his wife. He was in custody of U.S. Marshals, so start looking someplace else. It's a harsh reality, Booth. Deal with it," he added, looking straight at me.

I kept my expression neutral but lowered my arms to my sides, projecting an image of perfect calmness despite the anger and bitterness I felt. "Then kick me off of the case." I said in a soft challenge, locking eyes with Cullen to show I wasn't intimidated by him.

"Holly, what are you doing?" Booth groaned softly, covering his face with his hands. This is really not his day. Brennan didn't say anything, although that in itself was a sign that she was bewildered.

"You want off of the case." Cullen repeated like he couldn't believe it, and then he chuckled heartily. "This is coming from the girl who invited herself into the FBI, saying that she could handle it."

"I am perfectly capable of handling it," I said with a steely tone. I tried not to let it show how angry I was that he thought I was actually scared. Hell, I took out an armed U.S. Marshal on my own! "But if you won't let me do anything useful, then I'm wasting my time and I might as well just go back to my job. You tell us to investigate a murder and a kidnapping, but won't let us access any useful suspects."

"It is a logical decision," Cullen argued against me with a raised eyebrow, curious despite his better judgment about where this was going.

"Yeah, sure," I said with a roll of my eyes. "But only if you take it out of context!" I took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling for patience before looking back down. "There is an eight-year-old child who has been abducted because his father is testifying against a company that provides armor for soldiers in Iraq. If mercenaries have that child, then they won't _care _about ethics. They won't see a terrified child. They'll see a _tool _that they can use to keep themselves empowered. You won't let us access the father, who is the only link to those mercenaries, and our best chance of getting that boy safely home – that is, if he isn't already dead. On top of that, if we do find them, we aren't even correctly prepared, because you refuse to acknowledge that K.B.C. Systems won't play fair. If we find the location and go in, your men will be stepping into a slaughterhouse. The mercenaries will shoot to kill – hell, the U.S. Marshals on your side tried to kill me today and I wasn't even armed! How do you expect us to work this case with due diligence if we can't even protect ourselves?"

Cullen watched me for a moment after I finished speaking. He was surveying me and sizing me up, and I was slightly out of breath for giving that entire speech with only a few breaks for breath. My fists were clenched at my sides. He took a moment before he spoke solemnly and with an arched eyebrow.

"I may regret this, but if you're that bound and determined, then arm yourself."

I wasn't entirely sure I'd heard right. Was he telling me to get a firearm?! I raised my eyebrows and my fists unclenched before I actually thought about it. "What?"

Cullen pulled his glasses off of his face and folded them up neatly, setting them on the desk next to his closed laptop. "High-profile case like this one, with a high risk, and Booth will need all the help he can get." He looked over at Booth. "You get her registered for rights to carry a concealed weapon and get her a standard bureau-issued gun." He looked back at me sharply. "This is just for this case."

* * *

><p>In Booth's van and driving back to the Jeffersonian, I had a big smile on my face. My arms were crossed and I was smiling right out the windshield and at the car in front of us (a red Cadillac with North Carolina plates). At my side was the weight of a standard, FBI-issued firearm, half-hidden from sight by my sweater. <em>This is like a dream come true. I have a gun!<em>

Well, okay, so it's only for this case, and the circumstances are far from pleasant, but hey, for once in my life, I'm actually packing heat!

"I'll stay on Paulina Decker's remains to see if that leads somewhere," Brennan volunteered from her spot in the passenger's seat.

"Yeah," Booth said with a nod. "Holly and I'll talk to the victims' families – at least, the ones who aren't under federal protection."

Brennan sighed and twisted slightly in her seat to look back at me over the edge of the car seat. "Do you think a corporation would actually kill a woman and kidnap her child?" She asked me. I frowned at the clear upset and frustration in her voice.

"If they're proven guilty, they're sued billions of dollars, and that's not even counting the lawsuits filed against them. There have been times when people were killed for twenty dollars," I said, averting my eyes. Although my answer was indirect, it gave her the truthful response she'd been seeking.

"Do you believe the boy is already dead?" Brennan asked Booth after a moment, looking over to him and tugging slightly at her seatbelt, the only giveaway that she was nervous about finding the child already dead.

"I have to assume that he isn't," Booth said, using the driving as an excuse to look away from her and out the window, checking the side mirrors.

"Why make that assumption?" Brennan asked, shaking her head softly.

Booth sighed and he took a minute to answer. For a moment I thought he wasn't going to, and personally, I wouldn't have blamed him. "Because it gives me something to look forward to instead of dread," he finally said, anxiety repressed in his voice. "Given a choice, I like to avoid dread."

"Okay." Brennan looked back to the road and nodded slowly to herself. "That's logical."

"Is it?" Booth asked, surprised by her dictation.

"Why dread something that hasn't happened yet?" Brennan asked, looking back at him for a moment as she posed the rhetorical question. Booth and I had no answer.

* * *

><p>Booth sat behind his desk while I sat in a chair that was angled to see his computer monitor, which he'd turned on its stand so that we could both watch the home videos that we'd gotten from Decker's home. Booth had his head resting on one hand while with the other he tapped his desk to a simple four-beat rhythm. I looked up and down between the computer screen and and the piece of paper that I had pinned to one of the clipboards lying around in Booth's office, a pen in my hand while I drew pointlessly, trying to occupy my hands so I could focus on the voices of the recording.<p>

"_Am I going to ride a bike?" _The little boy – Donovan – had a voice higher than mine, and it was sort of quiet. Unlike the voice of his mother, he spoke English without a hitch, while his mother had a heavy Russian accent. Clearly, he was born here in America and was raised with American cultures. I looked up again. He was sitting on a bike with black training wheels and a horn on the handlebars. The bike was simple; the eight-year-old was probably only six or seven in this video, so there were no gear shifts or special additions to the bike, other than a set of reflectors. He wore a plain white helmet and his mother had insisted that he strap on some bicycling pads over his elbows and knees.

"_Are you really asking? Or are you just stalling?" _Carl Decker was American, with his head shaved and his face sharp and angular. He was tall and muscled in a lean, athletic sort of way – not like a football player; more like a cross-country track team sort of way. He wore jeans and a button-up plaid blue shirt in this video, like it was just a casual day at home with the wife and son. Unlike his son, his voice was riddled with tension and I could hear the slight tremor, even through the lower quality of the video tape.

"_Uh, stalling," _Donovan mumbled to his father after a moment, sounding almost unsure about his own words. I filled in the shading of the thin headband on my little anime character.

I glanced up as Decker rubbed the back of his neck before clapping his hand lightly on Donovan's shoulder. "_Yeah, I thought so."_

I lifted my hand up to look at the generic manga schoolgirl in mild satisfaction. I'm terrible at drawing real people, but after having to find something to do to pass the time when I'd finish tests at school, I'd gotten pretty good at sketching cartoons. My anime girl looked like she'd stepped out of _Ouran High School Host Club_ with her elaborate dress, spiraling curly hair, dangling earrings, high-heeled shoes, and soft blush. _Don't judge me!_

"What are we hoping to learn from this tape?" I asked Booth, giving up on my drawing and the recording. I set the pen on the clipboard. "We already know that Decker didn't torch his wife and abduct his son." Booth gave me this disappointed look and I felt an urge to "redeem" myself. _I hate feeling attached to people. _"I'm just wondering what we're going to get out of the videos."

Booth sighed. _Well, at least he's not declaring me a lost cause, _I thought wryly. "We put faces to names, we get a sense of the humans and predict how they act. Come on. You're a junior agent, remember? What is the tape telling you?"

"Carl Decker has an irrational fear of his son being injured," I stated factually, tapping the end of the pen lightly against my paper, making little ink dots appear along the edge of my drawing.

Booth paused the video and leaned back in his chair, frowning at me as he crossed his arms. "Being afraid of his child being hurt isn't irrational," he said defensively – probably because he fears for Parker's safety. How could he _not_, working as a homicide investigator?

I sighed. "No, not most times. You wouldn't be scared of Parker's safety if he was going to do something harmless – go on a carousel, or play with a toy. Carl Decker is displaying several tics that are cluing me in to his anxiety over something as simple as Donovan Decker learning to ride a bicycle."

"Well, he could fall over," Booth reasoned logically.

I shook my head. "No, it's more than that. Donovan's using training wheels and it's clear that he himself is ready to ride the bike." I paused and frowned, trying to think of how to explain. I'd gotten too used to not having to explain my conclusions since I graduated high school early and adults stopped breathing down my neck to "show my work". "Learning to ride a bike is like a rite of passage between an adolescent of society and the adolescent's guardian. It has anthropological significance in our community as more than the mechanics of learning to ride a bicycle."

"Really?" Booth asked, leaning forward slightly in interest.

"Yes." I replied, nodding seriously. "On a basic level, it's a child learning to ride a bike with someone who has taken on the task of protecting that child. On a cultural level, it's much more symbolic. The guardian is passing on knowledge to the child that the child will need to have at a later point in life. It's also showing that the guardian has accepted that the child has grown up and matured, because in a way they're showing the child an easier way of leaving." I pointed at the paused frame of the video, looking for the examples displayed in the stilled image. "Carl Decker is tense. He's crossing his arms over his chest, which is a sign of defensiveness-" I'm so going to regret explaining that the next time I cross my arms out of defensiveness. "-He's rubbing the back of his neck, touching his mouth-"

Booth interrupted me before I could add the few more that I'd noticed. "So he's nervous. What does that tell you?"

I nodded slightly to show that I understood that he wasn't being rude, just trying to hurry me up because of the time sensitivity of the boy's situation. "Now look at Donovan. He's relaxed on the bike; his feet are on the pedals and his hands on the handlebars. He's wearing the equipment his mom wanted him to wear even though he's scratching at the elbow pads occasionally. He's uncomfortable with them but he knows it's important to his parents that he wear them. He's not nearly as nervous about it as his parents."

Booth lifted his head slightly arrogantly like he thought I'd missed something important. "So why was the boy stalling, then?" He asked, probably thinking I couldn't answer. Either that or he wanted me to explain why I knew that Donovan wasn't actually the one stalling. I don't know with Booth – sometimes I understand him well, but times like now, when it's about me, I can't quite figure it out.

"He's not," I said, shaking my head, triumphant that I'd won this one, even if I hadn't been able to tell why he'd been questioning me. "The father is. He keeps asking if he's ready or not, and at least some part of him is hoping that Donovan will say that he's not, and he wants to wait a while. Donovan understands that, even if it's not quite at the same level of complexity, and he's allowing his father to be more comfortable before he challenges his nerves."

Booth smiled a little. Whatever sort of test he'd had set up, I'd clearly passed. _Well, at least I didn't flunk FBI-People-Reading-101. _"Hodgins is right. Psychology is definitely one of your 'unusual hobbies,'" he said, making air quotations as he coined the phrase I'd used at Arlington National Cemetery just after we met.

I rolled my eyes. "Me and my unusual hobbies," I said in exasperation, with a slight smile.

Booth pressed play on the video again and I looked back to my drawing, making little revisions as I listened to the voices silently.

"_All right, ready?" _Carl Decker asked on the recording, his voice holding a note of stern finality, telling himself he was going to stop stalling.

"_I'm okay," _Donovan declared.

"_Be careful, Donny!" _Paulina fretted on the screen, biting down on her manicured fingernails anxiously.

"_Don't make him nervous, Paulina," _Decker chastened softly as I added a bit more shading to the earrings.

"_Push me, dad." _A bit more shadow to the shoulder to accentuate the lighting. "_Let go, dad." _Thickening the line of the heeled shoe in front. "_Let go!"_

"_Not yet," _Decker insisted, his voice shaking.

"_Let me go, dad. Let me go!"_

"_Not yet! Run along with him, Carl!"_

"_I can do it!"_

As I added some more volume to the long hair of my sketch, Carl Decker started laughing onscreen. "_He's doing it!" _He repeated that phrase in adoration for his son and relief that everything had turned out okay.

Paulina looked at the camera, frowning nervously at her husband. "_Be careful! Now how will we get him back, Carl?" _She asked, strands of her ginger hair whipped out of its bun by the wind.

"That's the real question," Booth agreed with a sigh. "Now, isn't it, Holly? How do we get the boy back?" I didn't answer, although I was thinking along the lines of _doing what we've been doing – but faster and better._

Not long after, a tall, blonde woman was escorted to Booth's office. I didn't know who she was, until she greeted the both of us with teary eyes and a thick Russian accent, made heavier by her stifled crying. Maria Semov, the aunt of the little boy and the sister of the murder victim, let me motion her down into a seat while Booth moved the monitor back so she couldn't see that we were going through their home videos. He stayed on his side of the desk while I sat next to her in another chair, staying mostly silent aside from introducing myself.

"They left this morning," Maria started, before her blonde hair fell in her face. Her reddish roots were showing because she hadn't taken the time to style her hair the way she had in the videos Paulina had taken, and her cheeks were tear-stained and reddened. "Very early, about five a.m.." Her words were clipped and I could see she was struggling.

At this rate, I seriously doubted she could speak fluently in English, especially with how much difficulty she was having keeping her thoughts together. This is one of the worst cases of grief I've seen, but I can't really blame her. Her sister's dead and her nephew has been kidnapped.

I chanced a look at Booth before looking at Maria again and softly interrupting her in slightly clipped but coherent Russian. "Мисс, я хотел бы предложить возможность говорить в свой родной в то время как я служу в качестве переводчика для Вашего удобства и комфорта," I said, after a moment of calling up to surface the memories of the classes I'd taken and how I'd learned. In one of my foster families, the dominant language had been Russian. Trying to understand what they were ordering me to do, I signed up for some classes at the community college and I learned by immersion and study at the library, as well. I wasn't completely fluent, but I was passable and I would be effective enough at this. _Miss, I'd like to offer the option of speaking in your first language while I serve as a translator for your ease and comfort._

Booth just gave me this look of surprise and confusion and if we didn't have Maria in the office with us, he probably would have asked what the hell I thought I was doing. But Maria nodded, sniffing and pressing her hand over her mouth to quiet her cries for a moment, composing herself again. "Спасибо,» she thanked me. "Они уехали рано, потому что Донован на сборной по плаванию. О, Боже!" _They left early because Donovan is on the swim team. Oh, God! _She exclaimed again, covering her face with her hands for a moment before she swallowed and looked up again, setting her hands in her lap.

"They left early this morning because Donovan is on his school's swim team," I translated for Booth, looking briefly from Maria.

"You speak Russian?" Booth asked me, shocked, looking between Maria and I like he was trying to understand what had just happened.

"Yeah," I said, almost sheepish, even though I had no reason to be. "Didn't I mention?"

"No!" He shook his head fervently.

"Oh." I paused for a moment. "Well, I speak Russian."

It was only thinking of it from Booth's point of view that I realized how surprising that was. I'd never mentioned it, but I was always very good at languages. I know several and, at my age, that's quite an accomplishment, but it never took all that much work. I studied, sure, but I never stayed up all night working. They just came easily.

Booth shook his head at me, clearly having noticed this already. "You and your sister were close?" He instructed me.

I relayed it over to Maria after a few seconds of thought, getting back into practice. "Были ли вы и Полина закрыть?" _Were you and Paulina close?_

Maria nodded quickly at this. "Да. Когда Полина и Карл разделены, она и Донован пришла, чтобы остаться со мной." _Yes. When Paulina and Carl separated, she and Donovan came to stay with me. _She sobbed dryly again, but it seemed like she was too dehydrated for her body to produce more tears. "Это ужасно," she added sorrowfully. _This is terrible._

I looked back to Booth and translated. "Yes, they were. When issues in the marriage arose, Paulina and Donovan went to stay with Maria."

"Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt your sister?" Booth spoke in a normal volume, but he was directing his speech at me now, apparently trusting my linguistics abilities.

I translated this for Maria and she responded quickly, quite sure of her answer, which almost gave me pause. "Она должна быть Карл. Может быть, он боялся, что она возьмет Донован от него." _It must be Carl. Maybe he was afraid she would take Donovan from him._

I actually paused before restating it in English back to Booth, asking a question of my own as gently-phrased as I could. "Будет ли она это сделать?" _Would she have done that? _There would be a motive, although Carl Decker had been under watch by U.S. Marshals… still, it might be worth looking into if Paulina had harbored those intentions.

"Кол-Никогда." _No. Never. _Maria answered firmly and certainly. Even though she didn't like Carl Decker, she was confident that her sister had trusted him.

"Hello?" Booth interrupted my thoughts by snapping his fingers once and raising his eyebrows at me. "What's that in English?"

"Paulina would not have deprived Carl of the right to see Donovan, however Maria believes that a fear of exactly that happening could have motivated him to – attack," I finished lamely, remembering at the last minute that Maria could still understand English, she just wasn't utilizing that skill at the moment. How do you tactfully say, "kill her sister and abduct her nephew?" You don't, that's how.

"You don't like your brother in law," Booth instructed me to translate, which I did obediently.

Maria's response would definitely have me thinking about it later. "He is supposed to be brilliant, I know," I repeated in English just after Maria finished speaking, staying mindful of the FBI agent who wouldn't appreciate not knowing what we were saying. "But he is cold and angry. Everything has to be just so," I said, carefully saying exactly as she had, committing it to memory.

"Why did Carl and your sister separate?" Booth asked me.

I repeated it in Russian to Maria, and she paused after her sentences so that she could give a lengthier explanation without overwhelming me. She must have detected the clear clip of my Russian that I had heard in her English. "Paulina said he was having an affair," I repeated after her. "I thought, "Who would want him?" But she found credit card receipts from a motel he went to once, twice a week." Paulina spoke the last of her explanation quickly and with no little amount of bitterness, which I left out of my tone when I repeated it to Booth. "When she confronted Carl, he was furious. He wouldn't talk about it, so she left him."

Maria jerked forward, startling me as she grabbed my hands. I tensed completely but was unwilling to snap at her when she was so distraught and upset that she couldn't even speak English fluently. "Please find Donovan," she begged, once more using English so that there was a clear conveyance of desperation and pleading. "Find my sister's boy."

I looked back at her for a moment with a neutral expression. I can't promise we'll find him alive… but I will find him. We both will – me, because of my sense of justice, and Booth out of care for children based on his love for Parker. "Даю вам слово," I swore, completely serious, my eyes darkening. _You have my word._

* * *

><p>Booth and I went to the K.B.C. Systems' headquarters next, and I got to proudly show off my sidearm while we logged in as visitors to interview the company's CEO (a Trent Seward guy) in the company of his attorney. We questioned them in this huge conference room around a round table, and we were at opposite ends, so it wasn't exactly a friendly meeting. The setting made it actually kind of awkward to talk across the room.<p>

Seward smirked when Booth asked about Carl Decker. "Carl Decker is not only a disgruntled employee," he started with an irritated roll of his eyes. "He's a… a…" he looked to the attorney next to him for assistance. "What's the term?"

The attorney snorted. "As a lawyer, the legal term is "nuts and a pain in the ass.""

"Oppositional defiance disorder and paranoia is what I read," Seward frowned, looking over at the attorney in confusion.

The attorney nodded sideways at him. "Like I said: nuts and a pain in the ass."

"You read paranoia where?" I asked Seward sharply, having caught that. They had made a file on Decker? "You had Carl Decker investigated?" Caught with the full disclosure policy, the attorney sighed to the CEO and lifted a manila file from among her other papers and pushed it across the table with her fingers. I caught it just before it fell off of the table and opened it, looking at the first paper, which was full of Carl Decker's basic information.

"He's making extremely damaging allegations against the company," the attorney tried to justify.

Seward was quick to jump in with, "False allegations."

I rolled my eyes. "Typical. A woman is dead and her son is in danger and all you care about is your company." I could barely conceal my disgust with them and I didn't even try to hide it from my eyes as I looked back at them and shook my head in disapproval.

"We are thinking of the bigger picture," Seward said, raising to the defense like I'd predicted he would.

"No, you're really not!" I shouted with a glare, cutting him down now that I'd provoked him into opening up for it. It bothers me how I manipulate people so that I can justify attacking them, either verbally or physically, but I opted not to think about it just then. "It's wrong that the defective armor was sent to Iraq, but that armor has been recalled. Some people are dead, some are injured, but nothing can be done about it. In the meantime, a _child _is in present danger and may be being tortured for information he doesn't have, because your stupid company decided that one family was worth your stupid reputation!"

I stood up, my chair pushed back so abruptly that it was knocked over onto the back with a thud. Both of the K.B.C. Systems' representatives looked shocked and taken aback, but a split-second glance to Booth told me that not only had he predicted my outburst, but he didn't completely disagree with it, either.

_I have a firearm. If I keep yelling, they'll perceive me as a threat._

I breathed deeply and threw the compilation on Decker to the table next to Booth. "I'm going to go wait outside," I said flatly. Booth gave me a miniscule nod, and without even picking up my chair, I stormed out of the room, slamming the conference room door behind me.

* * *

><p>Booth and I got back to the Jeffersonian not long after. Booth hadn't been pleased with K.B.C. Systems, either, apparently, as when he came out the doors and beckoned for me to follow him back to the SUV, he was grumbling in irritation under his breath. With the car in a tense silence, broken only by Maroon 5 on the radio, we drove back to see Brennan, but we didn't exactly get the nicest greeting.<p>

"Where have you been?" Brennan demanded upon seeing us, pulling her brown hair out of the collar of her white lab coat as she shrugged it back on, already having latex gloves pulled over her hands. Her tone was sharp and accusatory and I frowned flatly, having hoped for a more enthusiastic greeting rather than a harsh "where have you been?".

"We're acting as field agents," Booth claimed defensively, clearly as disappointed as I was with our welcome. "We were out in the field. What did you find?"

"A piece of an ear in the victim's mouth," Brennan said, with no little amount of attitude. _Well, even the best of us have short tempers when we have the crisis of a missing child to solve._

"Mm. Appetizing," I drawled glumly, walking behind Brennan and Booth and keeping up with their pace slowly enough to not step on their heels while at the same time not falling behind.

"It looks like she bit it off. It could tell us something," Brennan elaborated, pulling her ID card and its lanyard up from under her shirt to swipe it on the security system of the platform. "What did you find?"

"A lot," I said, holding my chin up indignantly. There was no need for the scorn on our work.

"No reason for the attitude," Booth added, seemingly agreeing with me and giving Brennan a look of irritation.

"I beg your pardon?" Brennan scoffed, pulling the ID card from its clear plastic envelope with the tips of her fingers. "Attitude?"

Booth shoved his hands in his pockets and I crossed my arms, deliberately hanging back a bit so I could still hear but not get the brunt of the verbal retorts if Booth said something stupid... which really didn't seem that unlikely. _No offense. _"Well, it's not like you've been doing all the work and we've just been kicking back."

Brennan sighed. "Okay. What have you found out?" She asked, sounding like she thought she was being patronized, but at least now she didn't have as much of a rude tone.

"The victim and her husband were having marital problems," Booth announced, clearly satisfied. "She found motel receipts. I got security tapes from the parking lot. I thought Angela could use her Fat Recognition Program on them."

"_Mass _Recognition Program," I corrected.

"You know what? Whatever," Booth said, waving it away. "Maybe we'll be able to figure out who Decker was seeing behind his wife's back." The tension between the two as the evident crisis rose in priority seemed to increase. "Is Angela in her office?"

Brennan shrugged, not gracing him with a verbal response, and he rolled his shoulders back before setting off to walk to the stairway leading up to the second floor to Angela's office. "Remember to keep English, kid," Booth called over his shoulder. "Yell if you need something."

"Yes, father," I returned sarcastically, just to spite him a bit.

* * *

><p>Brennan held up the tibia of Paulina Decker while Zach held a paper report and I stood across from Brennan and next to the intern, the table separating the two of us from the anthropologist. Brennan lifted the tibia up in front of her face to closely examine it for anomalies while she half-listened to Zach as he reported, "According to the FBI pathologist, there was no smoke in the victim's lungs." The bones were now stripped bare and cleaned, due to Zach's beloved flesh-eating beetles. I swear, he loves those things like most people love puppies or kitties.<p>

"Meaning?" Brennan prompted us. Sometimes I felt like I was still in school, but technically she was Zach's professor.

"The victim was already dead when she was burned," I stated evenly, looking away from the skull and to the ribcage, having a bit of difficulty not matching the skeleton to the anxious mother from the home videos.

"There was clotting in the lungs as well," Zach finished, and I looked over to him in alarm. _Super genius half-anthropologist half-engineer graduate student say what?_

"That's not at all disturbing," I said, looking back to Brennan as she set the tibia down and cocked her head at Zach, now giving him her full attention.

"For clotting to occur, superheated air would have to be drawn _into _the lungs," Brennan started, moving quickly around the end of the exam table and looking over Zach's shoulder at the report, analyzing it to see if it really said what he was saying, a look of pure surprise etched across her face.

"Which wouldn't have happened if she were already dead, so something else must have caused the clotting," I concluded, crossing my arms and throwing my weight to my other leg, bothered. What would explain that?

Booth's shoes thudded as he came to the side of the platform from the stairs, folding his arms and setting his elbows on the floor of the raised exam area. "Angela is ready with the tapes," he declared.

"The broken teeth could have resulted from particularly violent seizures," Zach tried to suggest, effectively ignoring Booth.

The FBI agent wasn't too surprised that he went completely unacknowledged, which was actually kind of sad. "Epilepsy?" Behind Booth, the state department woman – Miss Pickering – was taking swift, small steps down the stairs with a clipboard pressed to her side and her hand on the rail, her eyes concentrating on the first floor. When she reached the ground, she started towards the platform. Wonderful, we have to deal with her now.

"Actually, seizures aren't always caused by the most commonly-perceived explanations," I said, stepping back into my empirical personality and looking to Booth while I explained why his theory was pretty lame. _But I'm doing it nicely. _"Seizures, also known as acute muscular contractions, can be induced by poisoning, a sudden rise or fall of blood sugar levels, a-"

"Is this a good time to speak with Miss Kirkland?" Pickering interrupted, and I heard her heels clicking as she approached the platform to stand next to Booth, looking to Brennan as she asked.

"Hey!" I snapped, annoyed. "If you want me for something, you ask _me _if you can have my attention, not Dr. Brennan or Agent Booth or anyone else!"

She didn't even flinch, but Brennan glanced at me sympathetically, understanding my frustrations. She looked back to Pickering with a very pointed glare. "Considering that you had to interrupt her to ask, it's probably not a good time. Take Hodgins," she suggested instead, before bending down to look at the thoracic vertebra region, around where the lungs would have been.

The entomologist didn't realize that by stepping onto the platform, he'd also stepped into an ambush. "I demand a lawyer!" He exclaimed.

Pickering didn't even look at Hodgins. "I don't need Dr. Hodgins, I need _Miss Kirkland."_

"Yeah, and I need you to address me when you want me for something, but we don't always get what we want, do we? If I demand a lawyer, does that mean that I get out of it too?"

Brennan looked up at that and nodded at Pickering decisively. "If that's the case, we all demand a lawyer," she commented.

Pickering gave a very false smile but tried to seem polite anyway. "I'll wait for Miss Kirkland."

"If you never get around to actually asking _me_ for my attention, then you'll be waiting for a very long time."

"Why aren't you interviewing me?" Hodgins crossed his arms in anger.

Pickering opened her mouth but thought better of what she was going to say. "It won't be necessary," she said instead, before turning on her heel and beginning to walk off towards the hallway with the offices on the first floor.

"I knew it," Hodgins snorted, shaking his head. "They think my dossier is complete. They think they know everything about me." As Brennan and I shared a look, genuinely concerned about his mood swings, Hodgins raised his voice and yelled across the lab at the retreating woman. "Well, they're wrong!" He shouted.

I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. "A minute ago you were demanding a lawyer to get out of talking to her. Now you're complaining because they don't want to?" I complained. "Jesus, you men are confusing sometimes."

"Just be happy they're leaving you alone," Zach advised Hodgins, slightly jealous that Pickering was leaving the entomologist alone while she harassed him for an interview.

"Yeah, I'm happy," Hodgins sneered, crossing his arms in annoyance while he glared at Pickering as she left his sight. "Don't worry, I am ecstatic."

"You really don't _sound _ecstatic," I told him honestly, smiling slightly. I enjoy being around everyone here – their personalities are interesting and they don't try to lie about themselves without a very good reason, even though I'd lied to them by omission about myself. Hodgins jerked his shoulders at my comment, but didn't insist that he was happy.

Booth rolled his eyes at Hodgins before looking back to Brennan, still leaning against the platform and watching us through the silver metal rails. "Now, the ear you found. There's no way it's her own ear, right?" He asked, purposefully getting the track back onto the case.

"How could it be her ear?" Brennan countered with a frown of confusion.

"That's what I'm saying!"

"What?"

I laughed a little. "Okay, that's some miscommunication. Basically, unless she's a circus contortionist, there's no way in hell that she managed to somehow bite her own ear."

"Chromosome tests make it male," Hodgins added from a quick, short glance at Zach's folder, which apparently had the results of all of the tests that Brennan had had run on the evidence and the body.

Brennan nodded to show she'd heard that and then looked back to me, her eyes piercing in their intensity. "Seizures," she prompted, reminding me of what I was saying before Pickering had shown up and interrupted me.

"Right. Seizures could be to sudden low blood pressure, electrocution, infection, head trauma, lack of oxygen to the brain… brain tumor, although that's unlikely, given the victim's health," I finished what I had been saying earlier, slightly unsure, and looked to Brennan to see if I was correct and if I'd missed anything, but Brennan looked absolutely astounded. "What?"

"Electrocution," she whispered. "The broken teeth, the fractures, the clots in her lungs. She was _electrocuted._"

I frowned and crossed my arms. _Electrocution… _the word echoed around in my mind. "That much damage to the teeth could only result from multiple violent spasms," Zach said with a frown, his eyebrows knitting together as he looked over the skeleton in a new light.

I raised my fingers to my mouth without thinking, biting at my fingernails for a moment before saying, "That's it. She was tortured. Donovan Decker is in much more danger than we thought." I covered my face with my hands and sighed. _The little boy's mother was tortured when she could have fought back. God knows what they'll do to a helpless child. An eight-year-old probably wouldn't even survive what his mother did._

"Why would they do that to her?" Zach asked.

"To find out where her husband was," Hodgins answered, his gaze flicking between Booth and I. "Right?"

Booth nodded grimly.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **_I'm sorry this update took so long! Life's getting the better of me. Anyway, six days since my last update I'd have updated twice, so here's two chapters now._


	34. The Woman in the Car, Part Three

"Electrocution would have to match a certain voltage and amps to be available to the general public. Assuming it's not, we can rule out houses in most neighborhoods and look to different options with reasonable cause."

"But someone in an apartment could have access to a generator, which would produce higher electrical current."

"Hmm. That's a good point, but torturing someone would make noise. Do you really think it would be possible to electrocute a woman to death in a public area like an apartment? Besides, wouldn't the power drain? People would be sure to notice it. These guys are smarter than that, if they work for K.B.C.."

"I notice that both you and Agent Booth seem to be gravitating towards the suspicion that K.B.C. Systems is responsible for the torture, homicide, and abduction. Do you have any concrete proof?"

"Not the way you'd consider it, but it's highly likely and makes sense. K.B.C. doesn't want to go under. People like them, they'll do things that people like you and I wouldn't ever seriously consider as long as it benefits them."

"Eh-hem," Pickering cleared her throat loudly, standing off by the doorway while Zach and I exchanged our theories off of each other while we took closer observations in the bone room. She held her clipboard and pen and had been vying for our attention for several minutes now, but she wasn't going to get it if she didn't learn communication skills.

"There are vending machines in the loft if you need a drink," I said listlessly, pulling the neck of a sort of giant microscope over to myself and putting it over the radius closer to me. Zach was on the opposite side of the table, making note of a math expression or something to assist him with the voltage and amps variables.

"Could we start, please?" Pickering demanded impatiently, her calm finally wearing thin. Her heel clicked as she tapped her foot in irritation.

"Any time," Zach freely permitted. I gave him a look of disappointment. _Don't leave me on my own against the security detail hell-lady! _"I can do two things at once." _Oh, that's better._

Pickering's voice rose in annoyance. "_Mr._ Zach Addy, I require your full attention!"

"No, you don't!" Zach replied, his voice rising in turn. I gave him a big thumbs-up when Pickering wasn't looking, but he cowered under Pickering's glare. "But I'll give it to you," he quickly relented. I sighed and punched the air in frustration.

"What was with the way you addressed him?" I demanded, grabbing onto the first thing I could think of that would delay the security until I had an excuse to leave the woman's company. I was also slightly irked that she'd emphasized his title as _Mister_, like she was deliberately pointing out that he didn't have a doctorate yet. "Is it important that he be referred to as _Mr._? I'm sorry, is there a hierarchy here?" I scoffed and forced a derisive laugh out of my throat. "Because if so, you are way out of your league. You are playing with people higher up the food chain than you are, because – now, correct me if I'm wrong – but _you're _not a doctor, either!"

Pickering eyed me irately. "What is your problem, Miss Kirkland?" She asked incredulously, affronted.

"My problem?" I repeated. "My _problem_ is that you came in, insulted Dr. Hodgins by basically saying he doesn't have the potential to tell a secret, bothered Dr. Brennan into trying to avoid you, and now you're picking on my friend because he's a super-genius, younger than you are, just because he doesn't have his doctoral degree yet!"

"I need to establish that neither of you are threats to the security of the country," Pickering justified, taken aback and also astonished by my behavior.

I spread my arms widely, inviting her to take some stabs at me. I'm acting wild and reckless, I know, but I can't help it. If she deems me a threat, I get taken away from the people who have treated me better than anyone I've ever known after only meeting them a month ago. "I'm seventeen years old without a family or a college education despite a high GPA and early high school graduation. What are you scared of from me? Worried I'm going to trash-talk your precious government? Don't worry, _sweetie_, half of the country's doing that already."

"I'm getting a degree in forensic anthropology, another in engineering. What are you afraid of? That I'll build a race of criminal robots who will destroy the world?" Zach asked in exasperation. He cocked his head and held himself up by pushing against the side of the exam table with the heels of his palms.

Pickering blinked repeatedly. "Do you have that kind of fantasy often?" She asked in concern.

Zach looked down to the bones in front of him, rolling his eyes. I don't think I've ever seen him this bothered… I know he wasn't this irritated by Pickering earlier, so is he annoyed that I'm making a fight out of it, or is he annoyed that Pickering is bothering me? It's probably not the latter, no matter how heartwarming that would be, because even if he did particularly care about my feelings and position in the lab, Zach is very rational and knows I can take care of myself. "Very often," he grumbled.

"Does it concern you that such adolescent thoughts are a sign of emotional retardation?" Pickering asked, going into an interrogative state of business. I growled at what she said (it could be taken as an insult), but Zach looked up at me, met my eyes, and shook his head very slightly.

"I've been told," he said, sighing slightly as he rolled a bone in the arm over so that he could observe the other side. "I'm working on it."

"Do you understand why this may concern us at the state department?" Pickering asked, shifting her weight and raising her eyebrows.

"Not really," Zach muttered.

Pickering closed her eyes and groaned softly before opening her eyes again and repositioning her clipboard so it pushed against her side. "Hypothetically," she started. "You have a piece of information."

"Secret and meaningful information?" Zach asked her, tilting his head analytically. Glancing at Pickering, I circled around the front of the table so I was next to Zach and further away from her.

"Yes," Pickering agreed with a nod. "Say the security of the nation is at stake. Could I bribe either of you to give it to me?" She dragged me back into it, glancing between the two of us expectantly.

Zach tightened his jaw for a moment before shaking his head in decision. "No."

I crossed my arms arrogantly when she turned her gaze on me. "If you've read my history, then you know I was in nine eleven. I'm not easily frightened but that was one of the most horrific events in America's history. There is nothing that anyone could do to inspire me to become an accessory to mass murder."

"Threaten either of you?" Pickering persisted.

"No," Zach said immediately.

"Absolutely not. If someone threatened me I'd return the favor."

Pickering swallowed tensely at my reply before crossing her arms, setting her clipboard on the edge of the exam table. It wasn't touching any bones, but it was not supposed to be there. I eyed it for a moment, resisting a very, very strong urge to reach out and knock it onto the ground. "What if I made a rational argument that was very persuasive?"

"I'd persuade them it was in their best interest to leave me the hell alone."

"Merely persuasive?"

You can probably guess between Zach and I who said what.

"Irrefutable," Pickering reestablished. "I make an _irrefutable _argument as to why you should give me this piece of information. Would you do so?"

"Fuck no. You irritate me too much to do anything to please you." Obviously, that one was me.

Zach put more consideration into his answer. "Not without checking with Dr. Brennan, Angela, or Holly first. They usually know more about this sort of thing." I blinked before smiling slightly, honored that I was on his list of trusted confidants. "I'd see what they say, and maybe Agent Booth if he talked to me – he probably wouldn't. I'd check with Dr. Hodgins, but he'd say it was all part of a conspiracy," which is probably right. "So I mostly only take his advice on women." Zach looked up from the bone's faint markings with a look of sudden realization. "Four hundred eighty volts, three hundred fifty amps."

Pickering frowned and leaned forward. "I beg your pardon?"

Zach smiled at her, being unintentionally condescending. "It's… sort of secret information. I probably shouldn't tell you."

I grinned at him. "Any other questions?" I asked Pickering before quickly adding, "Good, I didn't think so. C'mon, Zach, let's go find Dr. Brennan."

* * *

><p>Zach went to go see Hodgins and see if Brennan was there while I went to look in Angela's office. I got rich on that guess, and found not only Brennan, but also Angela (big surprise, who would have guessed she was in her own office!) and Booth. They were looking through the tapes from the motel. "Carl Decker is one point seven meters tall," Angela was commenting, "And he weighs fifty-eight point two kilograms."<p>

"He's an ultra-marathoner," I said, slipping in the room through the ajar door and announcing my presence. "That he's particularly lean compared to most men should make it easier to find him on the tapes using the Mass Recognition Program." Angela nodded at me with a slight smile as I frowned. "Hm. We need to come up with a better name for your computer systems. Imagine how much time it would save to use an acronym. MRP? No, there's no vowel…" I trailed off in thought before shaking myself out of it. "Hold on, back on topic."

"I talked to Pickering," Angela said as the videos fast-forwarded. We all just sort of watched in interest while the green and red digital boxes sized up the figures.

"Was it awful?" Brennan asked in unconcealed disappointment.

"Actually," Angela corrected, sounding pleasantly surprised. "I found it cathartic."

"I found it incredibly stressful," I told Brennan in the interest of giving her complete information before she formed an opinion. "However, I was admittedly confrontational."

I saw Angela try and fail to hide a smile. "Why does that surprise me?" She asked in pretend confusion, looking at Brennan playfully.

"I have no idea," Brennan answered truthfully while I crossed my arms and pouted. _I'm not that bad… am I?_ That I couldn't really answer that for myself was the answer I needed and my pout fell as I realized that they weren't being that untrue to my personality.

Booth was sort of ignoring us, more interested with the videos. He was trying to focus on finding the boy, which I understood, because of his son. On the other hand, it was easier for me to not spend every moment fretting and focusing. I won't work objectively if I think of a terrified eight-year-old being electrocuted to death. "His head's down. What do you think?" He asked as the green box framed and analyzed a bald man leaving a second-story room from the balcony.

I watched the video of the man moving for a minute. His steps were short and fairly close together and he moved with the entire weight of his body in one place. Maybe a football player, but I doubted he was an athlete at all. "No, that's not him," I told him. "He doesn't move like an athlete. You and I, we run around a lot. We move a certain way, we take longer strides and when we walk we move our weight forward more fluidly, not just when our legs get ahead of our body."

"She knows a lot about us," Angela stated again, faintly smiling although seeming a bit disturbed and uncomfortable. She was still talking about Pickering. "It's creepy."

"Well, it's confidential," Booth replied, shoving his hands back in his pockets.

"Couldn't you get the file?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

Booth considered this for a moment and shifted. "…Probably," he finally decided.

Brennan scoffed. "Then it's not confidential."

I blinked as Booth jumped and pointed at the screen sharply and suddenly. "That's him!" He snapped. "That's Carl Decker." I looked back to the screen and stepped forward, trying to see better. The lean, muscular form of the same man from the home videos was sneaking out of a ground floor room. "Fast forward. See if he shows up with anyone else," Booth commanded.

Angela fixed the system on Carl Decker and fast forwarded the tape. Eventually it came up to him talking to another man by the door to another room. "Back up," Brennan sharply interrupted. "Freeze on that guy. Can you zoom in?"

Angela hummed in agreement and zoomed in on the second man and a small smirk played at my lips. "A secret life can definitely cause marital strife," I said before frowning. "Oh. I didn't mean to rhyme. Sorry."

"He was having an affair with a _man_," Brennan said, her eyes widening in surprise.

"Alright, simmer down," Booth hushed her quickly. "For all we know, he's meeting a hit man."

Angela scoffed and shook her head. "He sure doesn't look like a hit man," she countered with a smirk.

"Looks can be deceiving," I quoted the age-old saying, attempting to sound wise.

"You would know," Booth shot to me with a raised eyebrow. I shrugged sheepishly. "Print the picture. I'll see if he's in any of the bureau's databases," he directed Angela.

"What do we do when we find him?" Brennan asked, her voice weary and tired as she pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face and back behind her ear.

I cast a look at Booth before answering. "Drag him in with handcuffs if he refuses to come by means of a smile and invitation. Maybe wave the gun around," I added with a little grin. "See if he's got both of his ears intact. Then we'll call, tell you what's happened, and maybe threaten him for information anyway, just to see him squirm." My eyes gleamed in the light reflected across the room and Angela shook her head at me in exasperation.

* * *

><p>I stepped into Cullen's office with confidence. He called us here, so it's not like I can be scolded for messing around in granddad's office. Just inside, Cullen was sitting behind his desk, with a man with short black hair across from him. The stranger wore a business suit and his olive-colored skin contrasted with the lighting. A brown briefcase was sitting upright on the floor beside the chair. Unfortunately, both of his ears were intact, just like his tailored suit and polished, tacky dress shoes.<p>

He looked over when Booth and I came in and I recognized him from the video. "I'm sorry," I said, pausing and raising a hand to my head like I was shocked. "We just posted that face in the hot seat half an hour ago. Are you arresting yourself for us? Because if so, damn, that's helpful."

The man sneered at me in annoyance. "My boss is the United States Attorney General," he informed me snobbishly. I got the feeling that he was used to being pampered. "You're not doing my career any good by putting me on the hot list."

I laughed, looking down to the ground and nodding for a minute before looking back and waving slightly, quieting my chuckles. "Ah. Sorry. I just think it's funny that you think I care more about your career than I do a kidnapped child and murdered woman."

Cullen rolled his eyes, leaning back and pushing his coffee mug further away from the edge of his desk. His chair squeaked slightly as the back leaned over. "Special Agent Seeley Booth, Miss Holly Kirkland, meet U.S. Attorney, Ken Weeks."

I visibly deflated. I blew at some hair that fell in front of my face as my shoulders slumped slightly. "Aw. I was hoping you'd turn out to be homosexual or only have one ear. Or both, but I'm not picky."

"Holly, play nice," Booth cautioned me. Despite his warning, I could hear the amusement in his voice at my flippancy and suppressed a smirk.

Weeks snorted and looked away from me, looking to Cullen – or, rather, Cullen's desk – again. He bumped his elbow onto the arm of the chair and pressed his cheek to his knuckles, irritated and not in the mood for me. Well, too bad. "Yeah. I get the gay thing a lot, because I'm so cute, but the one-eared thing?" He lifted his head from his fist for a moment to jerk his head at me irately. "That's unique to you."

I flashed him a cheeky smile, showing off my teeth. "What can I say? I'm full of surprises."

"You're Carl Decker's justice department handler?" Booth questioned, interrupting before it could evolve into a fight. He came up to stand next to me instead of slightly behind, making his authority known.

"Carl Decker was my prime witness against K.B.C. Systems," Weeks explained, still a bit irritable, but now his annoyance with me was ebbing slightly. Now he was just sulking.

"Was?" I prodded, thoroughly enjoying aggravating this guy. "Were you fired?"

"No," Cullen interrupted before Weeks could answer with a derisive snort. "They _lost _him."

I blinked. "What the hell, man?!" I exclaimed at Weeks sharply. "How do you _lose _a man with Marshals tailing him everywhere he goes? I get that he's smart but it's not like he's a modern-day Superman!"

Booth covered his face with his hand. "A material witness for a specially-convened grand jury…" he summarized, his tone giving nothing away except for stunned disbelief. "…And you lost him?" He pulled his hand away from his eyes, blinking at Weeks with this sort of 'you disappoint me' expression. Weeks shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with our reactions. _Well, if he can't do his job right…_

"The guy's pretty smart! Genius level," Weeks said, crossing his arms and shrinking back a bit, defensive and insulted at the same time. "Do you have any idea what it's like to interact with those types of people?"

Booth and I exchanged a look and I smirked. _Let's see… Brennan, Zach, Hodgins, and maybe even I act like that sometimes. Yeah, I think we might have a basic idea. _"Yeah," Booth commented mirroring my smirking expression. "A little."

"So what made him run?" Cullen asked Weeks. He sounded bored, and his posture supported it, but he was at least paying attention.

Weeks rolled his eyes, sighing with a pitiful, woe-is-me attitude. "Decker insisted upon talking to his son every day. This morning, we couldn't put him in touch with his son. He panicked and ran. The marshals will find him," he added with a weak conviction.

If there had been something near to me, I would have pounded the side of my fist onto the surface. "It won't matter," I said what I felt was very obvious with a bitter snap. "He won't testify! Not when he finds what's happened to his family!"

"You might as well pack up that grand jury and send everybody home," Cullen agreed in distaste.

I blinked and looked over at the deputy director. _Did he seriously just agree with me? Twice? In one day? _I rocked on my feet, leaning precariously in the opposite direction. "Look, I understand that you're saying that I'm right, but please could you _not? _You're kind of freaking me out when you agree with me." Cullen just sighed and rolled his eyes, not dignifying me with a reply.

Weeks sighed loudly, dramatically, and stood up abruptly, grasping his suitcase with whitened knuckles. "If I get the chance, I'll give him the 'don't let your wife die in vain' speech," he promised with little sincerity. I glared. "Who knows? It might work."

"Do you think this company is capable of putting a hit on Decker?" Booth asked the attorney just as Weeks' hand landed on the handle of the door.

"To torture and kill his wife, and to kidnap his kid?" I added, crossing my arms and staring him down. I want honesty. The only way I know for sure to get it is to intimidate. To show confidence. To not show fear or anxiety.

Weeks scoffed, his eyes dark. "K.B.C. Systems sent our boys into battle with faulty armor." He blinked and shook his head slowly, disgusted. "In my book, if you can do that, you can do anything." He gave the room a look around again, surveying the occupants, before he turned, interest lost, and walked out, the image of calm disgruntlement.

Except I noticed that the hand holding his briefcase was clenching the handle so tightly that his knuckles were still white.

* * *

><p>Booth and I walked on either side of Brennan, keeping up with her fast, long strides. Her white lab coat fluttered behind her legs with her, her hair bouncing. <em>Jesus, she could be in a motorcycle race – and maybe even win!<em>

While we were practically jogging to keep up with her, she was trying to talk to us, which would be a lot easier if she would stop acting like she was trying to run away from us. "If Decker's as smart as they say, how will they catch him?" She demanded, storming towards her office.

"Forget Decker," Booth ordered, interrupting her before she could continue. "Our job is to find his son."

"You guys walk like your heels are on fire," I complained, following behind them. "I promise that it won't kill either of you to walk five miles an hour instead of twenty." After five minutes of walking at winged-shoe-speed, my heels were starting to hurt because I was putting the energy into my feet instead of my legs so that I wasn't actually running.

They didn't reply to my comment with words, but they did slow down a bit when we turned around a corner. I sighed, drawing my hand across my forehead in pretend exhaustion. Brennan swept into her formerly-empty office, making her way quickly to her desk, where she leaned over the papers and began to rifle through them. "If Decker doesn't show up to testify," she started, finding the paper she was looking for fairly quickly and straightening up again.

"No," I interrupted, stopping at the doorway and crossing my arms. Booth went just into the office before stopping, watching her lift the papers with a tilted head. "Whoever kidnapped Donovan had no issues with torturing his mother to the point of fatality. If there's any chance of it rebounding on them – Donovan recognizing or describing them, or of it possibly giving away something about their identities – which, of course, there obviously is that risk – then we cannot assume that his kidnappers will let him live."

It was depressing and saddening, of course. I don't want the child to be dead or hurt. Statistics and reason, however, are against me in this case. Even though I know that boy's chances are not favorable, I'm not going to give up. The way I see it, our best chance of getting him out alive is by locating him and then storming the place with heavy arms.

"Surely K.B.C. isn't going to-" Brennan started, her eyebrows furrowing as she didn't want to really believe what it was I had said.

"Bones," Booth interrupted. His eyes were sharp and focused although slightly bloodshot. _He's running himself thin with stress. _I made a mental note to get a soda for him if I passed by the loft. He could use the caffeine. "We don't know who hired these guys. K.B.C., military, disgruntled shareholders – or it could be someone we haven't even thought of yet!" He stopped, seeing Brennan staring at him with a big smile twisting her lips upwards. "What?"

She pointed at him, her eyes bright. "You just told me not to jump to a conclusion!" She accused, way too excited.

Booth rolled his eyes. "No offense intended."

"No, you were right," Brennan was quick to agree with him, but then the smile came back. "I just usually get to tell you that."

"Well, our relationship has taken a whole new turn."

I shuddered and raised my hands in a threat to cover my ears. "I really don't want to know."

"Not like that!" Booth exclaimed, his cheeks turning pink. He clapped his hands over his face in humiliation and I smirked, proud to have finally knocked him off of his game.

"Four hundred eighty volts, three hundred fifty amps, by the way." I turned to my side as Zach came to a stop beside me in the doorway. He crossed his arms over his lab jacket.

Brennan looked over at him for a moment before she went back to her desk. She set down the paper she'd found a moment ago, apparently having refreshed her memory on it. "Paulina Semov-Decker?" She asked for a point of clarification.

Zach and I both nodded seriously. I looked off to the side. I didn't enjoy getting shocked by a bit of static electricity on my doorknob after a thunderstorm – it must have been hell to be killed after a long streak of electrocution of that strength. "That's the voltage it would take to cause muscle spasms so strong, they would fracture the bone," Zach confirmed with a nod.

I held out one arm casually away from me, leaning my head towards the doorframe that I was resting against. "As you probably know, that's far from a household current. Zach and I have decided that they probably used a generator, meaning that they're probably not in a normal housing development and they'd probably somewhat isolated."

Brennan gave us both a warm smile. "You are both very smart," she praised, making me give her back my own little grin.

Booth looked over at Zach quickly in a short survey before he apparently decided that whatever he had in mind, Zach would work well enough. "Zach, this guy – Decker – he's like you. He's in the whole…" Booth fumbled for a word for a moment, waving his arms in the air just above his head. "…_Stratosphere, _IQ-wise."

Zach tilted his head at Booth curiously, intrigued. "What's his IQ?" He asked.

Booth half-shrugged. "One sixty-three."

Brennan interrupted, laughing. "He's _not _where Zach is," she corrected, very highly amused. She smiled at Zach.

Zach nodded smugly before he started to boast. "If he's in the stratosphere, then _I'm _in the _ionosphere,_" he bragged, self-satisfied. I rolled my eyes. _Honestly. Boys and their pride._

Booth shook his head at Zach after frowning, unsettled. "That's – That's not the point. Thing is, Decker escapes the U.S. Marshals, tries to contact his wife, and finds out that she's been killed. What does he do next?" He asked, pointing at Zach, prompting the graduate.

Zach's eyebrows knit together. "His IQ is not a variable," he stated in confusion.

I shrugged. "It was worth a try. Intelligence doesn't decide what you do – just, maybe how effective you are at it. An idiot or a genius could decide to assassinate the president. The genius is more likely to succeed, but the idiot could still have had the idea." Trying to explain something to Booth with an example of presidential assassination probably wasn't a good thing, I noted when Booth gave me one of those 'looks'. "What? It was the first example I could think of!"

"It depends on what kind of person he is," Brennan agreed, backing up the conversation so I was no longer in the direct line of fire.

Booth shrugged, hitting his fist against his palm in frustration. "Well, you know, he's a loving father. Estranged from the mother of his child…" _Hm… I wonder why that sounds familiar, _I thought sarcastically.

Zach, apparently, had thoughts on the same wavelength. He walked up in front of Booth and stood barely six inches away from the agent, having to crane his neck slightly to look at the agent's eyes due to the height difference in such close quarters. "Does that sound like anyone you know?" He asked evenly.

Booth reeled back a bit, giving Zach this look of disturbed, uncomfortable awkwardness. "Just… back out of my personal space, there, buddy," he urged.

"Zach's right, though," Brennan told Booth knowingly, crossing her arms. She waited until Booth had pushed Zach far enough away from him to be comfortable again before she added, "If you were in Decker's position, what would you do?"

I tried to envision it myself, just to see how similar my answer would be. If I had an eight-year-old son and my separated spouse had been tortured and killed, and my son was nowhere to be found and I knew that it had something to do with a testimony on warfare weaponry, what would I do? It didn't take long for me to have an answer. _I'd go after the head honcho and demand – no, threaten – him to call off the mercenaries and to release my child to me._

All signs point to K.B.C. being responsible, so if Decker knows that, then...

Oh, no. Trent Seward, the CEO of the company. If I were in Decker's position, he'd be the first person I'd think of to attack.

* * *

><p>With Brennan in the backseat, Booth and I were riding in front. Booth was driving, the sirens flashing and screaming even through the rolled-up windows. Booth was speaking into his FBI radio in the FBI van while I had forsaken my seat belt. Too anxious to sit still and do nothing, I had my gun out of the holster by my side and I was flipping the safety on and off, listening to the soft clicks that I could just barely hear and assuring myself that it was working. Even though I didn't like the CEO, there was no reason for him to be killed.<p>

"Bugar-Four, to accessories, proceeding to four-four-one-three L Street, K.B.C. Systems." Booth spoke quickly in his urgency but he was managing to keep his voice on the same octave and within the same five notches of volume. "Requesting local cowboys for backup. Possible ten-thirteen."

"_Roger that, Bugar-Four." _The radio crackled.

Brennan leaned forward between the seats as I flipped the safety back on with a soft _click. _"Did you just refer to us as accessories?" She demanded Booth, miffed despite the pressing circumstances.

"You wanted to know what I would do if I were Decker," Booth started. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, giving away his nerves, and the speedometer's needle slowly turned from the forty to the fifty on the dial.

"They kill my significant other, they take my child, I'm not going to go through police. I'm going to head straight for the person in charge," I added, agreeing. Vocalizing helped to calm some of the butterflies in my stomach and for a moment I was able to calm myself with that instead of listening to my very, very lethal weapon make clicks as I flipped the safety lock.

"I'm going to the source of the problem and I'm going to take him out," Booth finished, agreeing with a slight jerk of his head towards me.

"Take him out, like…" Brennan started, frowning nervously. She looked at Booth inquisitively and Booth looked away from the road long enough to give her one of his dark, serious looks. "Oh," she said quietly, understanding.

We stormed into the K.B.C. headquarters, Brennan behind Booth and I protectively. Although we hadn't said anything, Booth and I seemed to have agreed that the people with the guns (even if one is only seventeen) would be better equipped to deal with a shoot-off than someone without. Although I hoped that it wouldn't come to that, I had to accept that it was a possibility. If I couldn't understand the risk involved, I had no business being there.

Booth held up his badge with one hand, his other resting on his gun in the holster. I pulled up my wallet from my pocket and flipped it open, and where it normally showed my ID card, which had been replaced by my driver's license, it now showed my license to carry the sidearm that I held tightly. What? I figured that if I have a gun, then there must be a pretty good reason, so it's always good to not have to rummage through cards.

"FBI," Booth stated needlessly as we held out the badge and license to the security guard on duty. "Seward in his office?"

The guard nodded, wide-eyed. "Yes, sir."

Booth nodded and moved to the right, where Seward's office was down a hall and around a corner, and then through another room where his secretary was stationed. It's always good to have a good memory. While the agent went ahead, I looked back to the guard, shoving my wallet back into my pocket. "Secure the building," I snapped roughly. "No one gets in or out until we say."

I caught up with them down the hall and overtook Brennan, holding the gun in front of me with both hands. The anthropologist backed up behind Booth just before we turned to the right, into the secretary's office. A woman in a red top and grey pencil skirt, with blonde hair trussed up into a messy ponytail, laid on the floor limply. A trickle of blood ran from her nose.

"Usually, I enjoy your company, Bones, Holly," Booth said conversationally as Brennan and I both knelt by the woman's body. Brennan held her hand over her mouth and I pressed my fingers to her wrist. "It's times like these, though, that you both just give me a little something more to worry about."

"It was absolutely insane of you to think we'd agree to waiting in the car," I told him, standing up and letting the woman's arm fall over her stomach. "She's alive, just out cold."

"You enjoy our company?" Brennan asked, pleased. Booth didn't answer, just rocked his head back and forth like he didn't really want to have to say it again, and I moved towards the door to Seward's office.

Trent Seward sat at his desk, his back rigid in terror and his eyes shone with unshed tears when I entered. The man from the videos – Carl Decker – stood over him, pressing the barrel of a gun to his temple. "Make the call!" Decker yelled. The safety was off and his finger was on the trigger. I stopped in my tracks just inside the door and raised the gun to aim.

"FBI, Mr. Decker," I announced when Booth failed to do so within the first five seconds of our entry. Tensions had risen to a snapping point; one of the three parties had to give. "Drop your weapon immediately." I ordered.

Decker glanced over at us, but he didn't change the aim of his gun. "Nothing's changed," he hissed at the CEO. "Make the call, or I'll blow your head off!" I heard the click of Booth's safety turning off just behind me as I held the gun steady, aimed at Decker's chest. The lean athlete didn't seem to see a problem with how the standoff had just turned out of his favor.

"H-He wants me to c-call his son's kidnappers," Seward stammered, looking between Booth and I, his eyes flitting to the side to see Decker.

"Tell them to release my boy, or you die," Decker threatened. He made the gun click, pressing it against the CEO's head with more force. "It's that simple!" He looked back over to Booth and I, and in his eyes there was a plea that contradicted with his actions. "You both can shoot me _after _that, I don't care."

"I don't-" Seward started.

Brennan interrupted him. She was more focused on Decker than she was his intended victim. "Mr. Decker, Agent Booth and Miss Kirkland are excellent shots," she told him, her voice riddled with anxiety. She was completely serious.

Decker scoffed, biting the side of his hand tensely before he replied. "I'm not afraid to die." His throat was sore, his cheeks red, and his eyes bloodshot.

"Shoot him!" Seward yelled suddenly, his hands making fists around the edge of the desk. "For God's sake, shoot him!"

Booth gave a tiny, miniscule sigh. "Mr. Seward, please shut up."

My hands shook slightly as I held the gun, but not too much. If I shot, then I would still hit him with a fatal bullet. _I don't want to shoot him. I don't want to kill. _The other times I'd held a gun, I'd been nearly murdered and too high on adrenaline to think too much about it. "Mr. Decker," I started with a frown, trying to keep my voice steady. I didn't do too bad. "If you don't drop the gun, I will shoot you. You want your son safe and released from his kidnappers. You won't be able to make that happen if you're dead. You won't be able to make things happen right if you die here, tonight."

"Be rational, Mr. Decker," Brennan urged softly from just behind me. "What you're planning has failed. You have to adapt!"

"If we get your son back and you're dead, who will he have to come home to?" I asked. I raised my other hand up so that I could steady the weapon in my hands. "His mother is dead, and yes, Maria will take care of him, but how will he feel without his mother or his father? Knowing that Daddy was taken away from him because of his own stubbornness? Dr. Brennan is right. The _best _thing for your son is for you to adapt to the changed circumstances." I could only hope that his responsibility for his son would be enough to sway his determination.

"Adapt how?" Decker spat at me. I didn't even flinch at that, just swallowed and tightened my hold. "All I want is for my son to _live_." He met my eyes for several seconds, watching me closely. I raised my eyebrows and nodded towards my firearm pointedly. Finally, Decker seemed to decide that I had some more ideas what was going on than he did, and he turned the safety back on. I sighed deeply in relief. "You people just took away his best chance," he accused, slamming the gun on Seward's desk aggressively. I flipped the safety back on my own gun and lowered it down slowly.

"Good work, kid," Booth praised under his breath.


	35. The Woman in the Car, Part Four

So, at nine o'clock that night, I sat between Booth and Brennan on one side of a round conference table in the FBI. The case was going super fast – so much had happened in the last twelve hours. On the opposite side of us was Cullen, next to him the attorney Ken Weeks, and lastly, directly across from me, Carl Decker. We were all tired, as was evident, but we were all managing to stay awake, driven by different reasons.

"Give me _one _good reason why I shouldn't charge you with attempted murder, Mr. Decker," Cullen growled, his fists tightly clenched on top of the table.

"Do you think I went after Seward out of _vengeance?_" Decker cried out indignantly, shooting the director an irate, incredulous glare.

"Looks that way," Cullen returned sharply, glaring down the table to the would-be murderer.

"K.B.C. Systems hired people to kill my wife and kidnap my child," Decker persisted angrily. "Think _rationally _for a moment!" He banged the sides of his fists on the table and fell back into the chair, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring around in frustration.

I sighed, straightening my back and stifling a yawn. I raked a hand through my hair and set my forearm on the table. "He's right," I told Cullen with a little shrug. Although it wasn't exactly okay to try to kill someone, it didn't seem fair that Decker be arrested in the middle of trying to find his abducted, endangered child. Sure, arrest him after that, but at least let him see his son and make sure Donovan's alright first. That aside, the circumstances are extenuating, no matter how you look at them. "If K.B.C. Systems are behind the kidnapping, then Seward would be the one with the authority to call it off."

"A rational human being," Decker noted with a little surprised scoff. "How did you find yourself amongst these people?" He asked me with a pointed glare at Cullen and Weeks.

I sighed again, tossing my head back to look at the ceiling for a minute before I decided on looking back to the armor designer. "It is a _really _long story," I groaned truthfully.

"Sir, we're trying to help," Booth stressed to Decker.

"Excellent!" Decker held out his hands invitingly. "Hold a gun to Trent Seward's head and force him to let my son go!"

"Er…" I started awkwardly, looking between Booth and Decker uncomfortably. "No, Mr. Decker, that's… that wouldn't be helping so much as aggravating the aggressors, which I can assure you is not a good plan." I stopped for a moment, knowing that Decker wouldn't appreciate hearing that without facts. He was empirical, like Brennan, but more socially apt and more emotionally driven. "The evidence that Seward ordered your son's kidnap is circumstantial at best."

"I personally calculated the penetration tolerances for the combat flak jackets!" Decker snarled. I only blinked at his turn in hostility from semi-civility. "The company found my calculations to be excessively conservative. Thirty soldiers _died_! Trent Seward will do anything to keep me from testifying. He or someone working for him kidnapped my child and killed my wife!"

Weeks rolled his eyes and spun his chair very slightly so that he was facing Decker with his back towards Cullen. "If you want Seward, then go to the grand jury and tell them what you know," he pressured.

I sent a sharp, startled glare at the attorney. "He can't do that! Preventing his testimony was the entire reason his family was attacked! Do you think they need an engraved invitation to murder his son?"

Cullen sent me a 'shut up' look and leaned over the table, looking down past Weeks and to Decker. "In all due respect for what you're going through emotionally, Mr. Weeks is not wrong," he pointed out. I wanted to strangle him; he can't try to persuade Decker on what to do, this is his choice! I'm only making him aware of all of the consequences!

"This is my son!" Decker exclaimed, his eyes burning. "I love him! If there's a slight chance that I can save him by shutting up, then that's what I'll do – shut the hell up!" He stared challengingly at Weeks and Cullen, daring them to argue with him. I have to say, as far as fathers go, Decker is not too bad. He's got his priorities straight, at least.

"And what about the soldiers?" Weeks countered, exchanging a fast look with an irritated deputy director.

Decker took a deep breath and sighed, his hands fisting again on top of the table. "Analytically, I understand that many lives outweigh the one. But I cannot trade my son's life."

"Have you considered that by not testifying, your wife will have died in vain?" I seriously considered reaching out and punching the attorney in the face. He was pathetic. He knows where his client stands and he's actually urging him to do something that will get his son killed.

Apparently, Cullen was thinking along the same sort of wavelength. "Shut up, Weeks," he snapped. "If your people would have protected Mr. Decker and his family properly, we wouldn't even be here."

Weeks scoffed, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. "Let's go," he ordered Decker, standing up and grabbing his briefcase.

"You are acting incredibly like a brat," I observed with no small amount of distaste. "You get told something you don't like and now you're trying to leave. How childish and immature!"

Decker stood reluctantly after Weeks walked behind his chair and stood impatiently by the door, tapping his shoe. Decker looked over at me specifically and met my eyes. "The only way that I will testify is if I see _you _with my son."

I nodded silently, agreeing to those terms, because if I didn't then not only would it be harder to get Donovan but the people who killed and injured so many soldiers would walk free. _Great. So now I have to rescue a child from ruthless mercenaries, otherwise the child dies and accessories of murder and mass injury won't be rebuked. But no pressure or anything._

"Mr. Decker," Booth started as the attorney and his client started to walk out of the room. They both paused and turned around to look back at him. "You and Donovan – do you have a code word? Something to let him know that you sent us?"

I was surprised that he used 'us' when Decker had specified with 'me', but then again, what did I expect? Booth wasn't the type to let anyone go into a dangerous rescue mission alone.

Decker looked down to the ground, his eyebrows knitting together for a moment in thought before he looked up again. "Paladin," he answered, nodding slightly faintly. "Tell Donovan "Paladin.""

I considered that. _Paladin… defender of the faith, a protector. _I smiled slightly to myself. _I like that. The first definition fits for Booth and the second fits for me. Nice._

After the door closed and clicked softly behind Decker and his attorney, Brennan hummed with a sly little smirk. "You know, you tough people are all very sentimental," she noted, and I had the distinct feeling that she was playing around and trying to bother us. Booth and I shared an uneasy look. _Damn. She's onto us._

* * *

><p>"Hold on, Bones. I'm going to put you on speakerphone," Booth said into the phone, before setting the office receiver back down and pressing a button on the system. The speakers turned on and a light near the top lit up.<p>

"_Don't call me Bones," _Brennan growled through the line.

"It's nice to know some things don't change," I laughed. I leaned forward in my chair across from Booth so that the speakerphone would pick up my voice with more ease and accuracy.

"_Booth, Holly, the results came back from the ear in her mouth. We're looking for a one-eared South African," _Brennan told us urgently, jumping right into it and disregarding my comment as I said, "I really hope that by 'her' you mean Paulina Decker, otherwise this whole case got a lot more weird and awkward."

"South African?" Booth asked, surprised. A look of grim frustration settled over his face as someone knocked at the door. I raised my hand to stop him and got up from my chair.

"_Does that mean something?" _Brennan asked while I opened the office door. A bureau employee was on the other side, holding a small package with Booth's name on it in black permanent marker. He leaned inside, saw Booth, and then decided that it was okay to give it to me. I nodded appreciatively and closed the door as he left.

"Well, yeah," Booth said to the phone with a frown. I held up the package and he nodded, so I went back to the desk and handed it over. "There are a number of South African security consultants that companies use to do their dirty work in the third world." _And you call Hodgins a government conspiracy nut!_ "They're really just mercenaries."

"_He might be a mechanic of some kind," _Brennan offered.

Booth paused for a moment from ripping the paper around the tape. "You can tell that?"

"_He had traces of what is probably brake pad in his ear."_

"How'd that get in there?" Booth asked, frowning down at the delivery. He tilted it on its side, one of the ends undone, and a little brown velvet jewelry box tumbled onto the table, followed momentarily by a slip of hastily-torn cardboard. A bad feeling grew in my stomach; the package hadn't had an address, just a name, and no postage stamp, and who used pieces of cardboard instead of paper?

I took a liberty and completely disregarded that I had no business going through his mail. I reached over the phone to the cardboard and flipped it over. In the same black marker used to write on the package, the cardboard had the phrase "back off" written in sloppy, all-capital letters. Booth looked at it, then looked up at me, and we both glanced at the jewelry box, suddenly wary of it. "We just got a present from the kidnappers," I whispered so that Brennan didn't hear me interrupting her.

"_Well, any number of ways," _the anthropologist was saying, answering the earlier question. "_Most likely, his hand comes in contact with the asbestos and then he scratches his ear."_

Booth wasn't actually paying attention to Brennan anymore. He held the jewelry box down and pulled open the top, and I set my hands on the desk, leaning over to see. The bottom of the box was padded with red-stained gauze. My eyes widened and I reeled back, pushing away from the desk in alarm.

There was a finger in the box.

"_Hello? Are you still there?" _Brennan asked after there was a moment of silence, during which the tension in the office rose off the charts.

"Yeah," Booth answered tensely after a moment, snapping the lid of the box shut. "We're on our way over."

"_What's the matter?" _Brennan asked, now concerned as she detected the note of anger and dread in his rising voice.

"Someone just sent Booth Donovan Decker's finger," I snarled before Booth slammed his hand on the button to disconnect the call. _How could anyone do that to a child?! _I fumed internally, and if I hadn't been hell-bent on rescuing Donovan and jailing his captors before, then I sure as hell was now. "This is beyond kidnap. Now they've reached torture on an _eight year old!"_

* * *

><p>While Brennan looked at the severed finger under a microscope at the Jeffersonian, Booth couldn't seem to stop pacing behind her, rubbing his hands together and taking tense, small steps. I sat on the opposite end of the table as Brennan and was disassembling and reassembling my gun repeatedly. It was an exercise that would not only make me better at handling it, but the repetition eased my anxiety, sort of like a compulsion is eased by performing the action.<p>

_Twenty-two. Twenty-three. _I finished the final click, counting the seconds in my head, and flipped off the safety, holding it in my hands quickly like I was about to shoot. I flipped the safety back on and set the gun on the table. "Twenty-four seconds," I murmured, not sure whether I was proud or unsettled that I was so familiar with the firearm.

"An eight-year-old boy," Brennan whispered to herself, looking up from the microscope. She blinked and shook herself out of it, looking over to me. "That is consistent with what I'm looking at. You should really send this to an FBI pathologist," she added to Booth.

"They'll give me fingerprints and DNA," Booth argued, waving the suggestion away quickly. "We already know who the finger belongs to. We need more."

"Like what?" Brennan turned, her feet moving from under the table as she sat sideways on her chair.

"What?" Booth repeated. "You gave me a South African mechanic from a chunk of burnt ear! Do it again! But do it better, and do it fast!" Brennan stared at him in weary confusion for several long seconds before Booth noticed and stopped pacing long enough to urge her to work. "What? Start! Come on, do what you do!"

"You're kind of worked up," she told him uneasily.

Booth took a deep breath, more than 'kind of' worked up, as Brennan had put it. "What you see is a bunch of facts. I see a terrified little boy with his _finger _cut off. Now, is he even still _alive_?" He asked, trying to usher her forwards into her work.

Brennan turned herself back to the table, shuffling her legs back underneath while she looked through the microscope again, doing as he asked even though I know she doesn't like to be talked to with that kind of sharp voice. "Blood saturation levels in the surrounding tissues are high," she reported after a few seconds. "His heart was still beating when they removed the finger."

"So he's most likely still alive." I sighed in relief, looking down at the assembled gun in my hand. "That's good. That's something."

"Who does this?" Brennan demanded, shoving the microscope back in a sudden fit of frustration. "Cuts the finger off of an eight-year-old boy?"

"Mercenaries," I said with a disgusted look at the severed finger under the microscope. _These people are sick. _"Professionals. Experts at war games. People with psychopathology issues, like Howard Epps and the Unabomber and Jack the Ripper, who kill for sport and recreation. We see a frightened, vulnerable, innocent child. As I said in Cullen's office this morning, all they see is a tool, an instrument – a brand new instrument that needs to be broken in." I shivered at my own metaphor, realizing just how cold I sounded.

"I feel things," Brennan said, frowning and looking like she'd been told something cruel.

My eyes widened. I'd used the term 'professionals' in my description. "That's not what I meant, Dr. Brennan."

"I'm a professional, too," Brennan persisted. "I do better work if I only see the finger and not the child. It doesn't mean I'm like them!"

"I know that, Dr. Brennan," I assured her, wishing I could take back what I'd said. "I also know that they seriously screwed up by sending us that finger," I added, trying to revert the conversation away from the dangerous emotional territory.

"Why?" She asked. "Because it made you mad?"

Booth whistled. "That is something to look out for."

I glared at him over Brennan's shoulder and resisted the strong desire to stick my tongue out at him. "No, because we're going to use it to catch them," I stated assertively, standing up and holstering my gun. "This is the best lab in America, at least, and we've got the best forensic scientists available. We're going to get to work and we're going to find where Donovan Decker is being held and then we're going to rescue him, take him to his father, and get his kidnappers what they have coming."

* * *

><p>Hodgins, Zach, and I all waited for Booth to get off the phone. We weren't exactly patient, but Booth gave us the 'one minute' sign and judging by the tone of voice he was using, I could tell he was talking to his son. "Give him a minute," I muttered to the scientists on either side of me.<p>

"Did you kick the ball?" Booth asked, with the half-excitement that adults reserved for enthusing children. "How far did it go?" He waited a moment and then chuckled. "Backwards?" I looked down so none of the three saw me smiling. "Yeah, I can kick a ball. Daddy's going to show you on Saturday." There was a moment where even I, several feet away, could hear the excited squeals over the phone. "I'm going to see you Saturday, okay, Parker? Okay, I've got to go, bud. I love you." A pause came here, presumably Parker saying his goodbye and 'I love you.' "I'll see you Saturday… bye." He made sure his phone was off of the line before he shoved it in his pocket and looked at the three of us. "What have you got?"

"May I first just say, I love mass spectrometers," I said, holding up my hand and making the O.K. sign with a satisfied smile. Zach, Hodgins, and I had spent the last half hour in Hodgins' lab running tests.

"Yeah, and I loved it when your promises to shoot us were empty threats," Hodgins complained, less than half serious. "Now you've actually got a gun, Xena."

"It's unsettling," Zach agreed from my other side.

That had been a very interesting moment when Hodgins had noticed the gun at my side. I'd been reaching up a shelf to some equipment that Hodgins couldn't reach – my sweater had pulled up enough for him to see the barrel, and he'd freaked out. Given the general hell theme that seemed to have accompanied my day since early morning, this was the highlight of the day for me.

I sent identical glares at the both of them. "_Anyway_," I growled, dragging it out and crossing my arms in irritation. "Dead mother, tortured son, psychotic mercenaries. Can we focus?"

"The finger was severed using a hatchet on a wooden surface," Zach told Booth, changing the subject back to business with a short, brisk nod.

"A cutting board?" Booth asked quickly.

"No," Zach disagreed, shaking his head. "Older, unsealed pine."

Hodgins and I exchanged a look before I took pity on Booth and looked back to him. "It's more likely a sort of work bench… from a mechanics or engineering shop," I explained.

"Why?"

"Why do you question me?" I replied swiftly, irritated. It's not like he's going to understand all of the chemicals and their symbolism when put together, so why does he want me to explain? "Sorry," I added, rolling my eyes at myself. I know I'm a little touchy, and my mood is swinging around, but I'm tired and more than a little stressed. "Traces of lead and methyl tertiary butyl ether showed up in the mass spec on the bone."

"The nail was bitten to the quick, by the way," Hodgins added with a little frown.

I nodded sideways at the entomologist, still looking at Booth. "But that's not a mystery. The kid bit his nails because he was nervous. I do it, too." That's why my nails are so short. "And I bet you'd be a little freaked out, too, if you were in his place." Hodgins half-nodded towards me in agreement.

"M.T.E.B.'s have been added to gasoline since the seventies," Zach said helpfully, looking away from Booth and down our little line towards Hodgins.

"But there's lead here as well," Hodgins argued.

I held out my hands in either of their directions. "Cool down, keep your voices from getting all loud and squeaky," I said with a roll of my eyes as Hodgins got competitive and short-tempered. That there's a kid who actually depends on our results and our speed is straining everyone's patience. "Stay calm. You're both pretty."

"Lead gasoline was phased out between seventy-five and eighty-six," Zach contributed after giving me an odd look, trying to find out what I meant by that. I just shook my head at him, telling him silently not to worry about it.

Booth resumed the pacing and I followed him with my eyes as he speed-walked about five feet in one direction, turned, and speed-walked another five feet the opposite way. "Asbestos from brake pads, leaded gasoline, mechanics bench," he muttered to himself, trying to piece it all together.

"Paulina Decker was electrocuted by electricity from a generator," I added, biting my lip.

Booth stopped in his tracks and looked up to me, pointing at me in excitement. "We're looking for an abandoned gas station or mechanic shop!" He chuckled and got his phone again quickly, stepping past Hodgins and clapping the entomologist on the shoulder. "You know, you guys are geniuses!"

Zach turned to look after Booth as he walked away. "How do we find that?" He called.

Booth chuckled, shaking his head as he raised the phone up to his ear. "I work for the FBI, idiots!"

Hodgins stepped out of the line to glare at Zach sharply, crossing his arms. "Way to go, Zach," he praised sarcastically. "We went from geniuses to idiots in three seconds!" Zach winced.

I threw my weight to one leg overdramatically. "And the IQ in the ionosphere is brought back down to the stratosphere!" I snickered, raising my hand and snapping my fingers, the sharp sound echoing very softly in the room.

* * *

><p>"Paulina didn't make any calls from her cell phone after she was kidnapped."<p>

Sirens echoed in my ears, turned up as loudly as possible outside. I sat in the backseat, Brennan was in the front, and Booth was driving at twice the legal speed down the rural highway. The stars shone above us, little white dots in the coal-black sky, the moonlight glowing on the pavement as we raced to the location fixed in the GPS. Booth was talking, his words leaving his mouth about as fast as they passed through his mind, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. None of us were wearing seatbelts, but I really don't think any of us cared.

"But nobody turned it off, either. When she left the coverage area, the cell phone was automatically assigned a new routing tower," Booth explained rapidly.

"You can triangulate her position?" Brennan asked hopefully, looking over at him from the passenger's seat.

"Yeah, to within seventy-five square miles," Booth specified. "There are six abandoned gas stations in that area. Five of them were urban, and one's rural. SWAT teams are going to check them all out, but I think it's the rural one, and that's where we're going." He looked in the rearview mirror at me for a moment before going back to the road.

"Why?" Brennan asked.

Booth exhaled sharply and deliberately looked away to the side mirror that he'd only just looked away from. "Because I used to do this kind of work."

"What, rescuing people?" Brennan asked, looking at him in earnest confusion.

"Or… being the person they needed to be rescued from." Booth's voice lowered to near inaudible at the end and I stayed silent on the topic, respecting that he clearly wasn't proud of it and most likely didn't want to talk about it.

Brennan didn't know how to reply. She looked away from him, down to her lap. "Oh."

"Well, if I were going to kidnap and torture someone I'd get as isolated as possible," I said, averting the subject even further from Booth's life history. I know that sometimes good people do bad things; all it takes is being in the wrong place at the wrong time or being misguided. As long as you set yourself straight or don't truly believe that what you're doing is morally correct, then I don't think that you can't be considered a good person.

"Exactly. Holly's right," Booth muttered. He didn't seem bitter about the fact that I was right, but more about what I was correct about. "It's an abandoned truck repair depot. A SWAT team will meet us there."

"Thermal imaging?" I asked, leaning forward in between the front seats.

"Yeah. It should give us an idea of how many people we're going up against," Booth nodded.

"Why don't we ever take _my _car?" Brennan asked with a scowl, reaching for the air conditioning and pausing, unfamiliar with the different controls and irked that she had to take a few seconds to figure out the diagrams on the dials.

"Do you have bulletproof vests in the trunk?" Booth countered rhetorically.

"No."

"Hm. Well, that's why."

* * *

><p>Outside the rundown gas station, big black vans had the back doors swung open. An entire team of SWAT members were swarming around and they covered Booth's car, ushering Brennan and I out and over to the trunk, where Booth met us there.<p>

They popped the trunk and one of the SWAT men started dressing Brennan with a dark blue vest. Another did a double-take when they saw me. "What is a kid doing here?" He asked, turning and demanding Booth's attention as he started to buckle the straps of his own vest.

"Hey!" I protested. "I _can _talk for myself, you know!"

"The kid's authorized," Booth said quickly, fastening the last part. "Get her suited. She's allowed to carry but she'll be staying out here with SWAT."

"Excuse me?!" I yelled in indignant disagreement. "I'm going in with you!"

"Holly, you're seventeen," Booth started, completely serious.

"Am I? Hmm. Funny, I could have sworn I was twenty." I held out my arms as the SWAT man shook his head but started adjusting the vest to fit me snugly.

"We don't know what's going to happen but they're mercenaries. Chances are, bullets are going to be flying," Booth argued against me firmly.

The man moved behind me, pulling the straps from the front around to tighten them securely. I lowered my arms and dug into my pocket, retrieving my knife and flipping it open to make sure it wasn't jammed before shoving it back in my left pocket on the opposite side of my sidearm.

"I'm aware," I shot back to Booth sharply, being stubborn. But if there's one thing I can say about me, it's that I'm determined. "But I'm far from defenseless. I've got a gun, a knife, and you know I'm good at hand-to-hand. Do you think I _want _to be shot at?" I demanded, but went on before he could answer. "I know the dangers and I know that it's incredibly dangerous to go in but I'm not waiting out here."

"Holly, I can't let you-"

I interrupted him again, the flashing lights lighting up the side of my face. "I know you think you can't let me go in but you have to know that I'm not doing it for myself. Decker isn't going to testify if I don't get his son myself, he _said _so. I care more about the kid than I do the already deceased but it doesn't mean I'm okay with criminals walking away after sending faulty armor to American soldiers in the middle of a war ground. Please," I added, nearly begging. I'd used up all of my reasons. "I'll be careful. I won't try to negotiate because I know it won't work. I'll focus on finding Donovan and I'll get him and get straight out. We don't have _time _to argue!"

Booth just stared at me and we had a sort of competition to see which of us would back down first, but I wasn't going to give in. I mean, how bad could it be? We walk in, I get the kid and get out, and if necessary shoot someone in the leg so they can't follow me. Then the SWAT guys cuff the mercenaries and drag them out. Simple enough. And I'm wearing a bulletproof vest! I know that doesn't make me invincible, but it does give me a fair amount of protection from stray gunfire.

The SWAT man handed Booth a gun, holding on by the longer barrel. A small viewfinder was attached to the top; it was meant for serious shooting. "The F.L.I.R. imagery gives us three adults within the structure."

"The boy?" I demanded, rounding on the man and crossing my arms. The vest was heavy and made it difficult to breathe quite so easily, but I'd deal with it, considering the circumstances.

The man blinked and leaned back from me, so surprised by me that it came out as a question when he replied, "No reading?"

"It's probably because he's small," I told Booth quickly. I _have _to prove to him that I can think quickly enough to go in! "Hypothermic. Then he's probably made himself as small as he can so that they won't touch him again."

"Entirely possible, Miss," the man, now designated SWAT Man Number Three, said with a nod. "What's the play?" He added, looking over at Booth.

I did the same, turning on my heel and crossing my arms and looking at Booth pleadingly. He can't just expect me to wait out here while he goes and does the hero thing! Cullen said it himself; they need all the help they can get!

Booth gave me a long look, his eyes darkening before he looked back to SWAT Man Number Three and spoke quickly, making a split-second decision that I think he was trying to voice before he changed his mind. "I go in first, then Holly – that's her – goes in behind me and she goes _straight _for the kid. In and out, get Donovan and only fight if you have to," Booth said, locking eyes with me as a warning. "If you get hurt, get out. Don't put yourself in any more danger than you already are."

I nodded, breathing a quick sigh of relief and reaching to my gun in the holster, flipping off the safety so that I could draw and fire quickly.

"What about me?" Brennan asked. She reached up to her neck and flipped the end of her ponytail out from beneath the collar of the bulletproof vest.

"Wait outside," Booth ordered flatly.

"But I don't want to miss anything!" Brennan protested loudly over the sounds of the SWAT team getting ready to storm the building.

"Bones, Holly is armed enough to take out around a dozen people and I don't even want her coming in," Booth tried to urge Brennan, pulling at the straps on his vest to make sure it was tight enough to stay on. "These guys aren't like anyone you've ever come up against, so please, just be someone you aren't for the next ten minutes and hang back. _Please._"

A chill ran down my back. _Take out?_ We're aiming to subdue and arrest, right? He made it sound like we're planning on killing them. But Booth glanced over at me and I didn't want him to see that he'd spooked me, because I _need _to go in there with him to get Donovan.

For me, I know how dangerous it is, and I know that Booth is capable of finding the boy and getting him out, and he can always pass Donovan off to me before Decker gets here. In fact, if I asked him, he'd probably be more than willing to do that, just because it kept the silly, self-destructive seventeen year old from walking into the dangerous rescue mission. However, I feel a compulsion to get Donovan myself. I'd promised both of the boy's living caretakers that I would get him back, and now I have to own up to the promises I made, suck up my own anxiety, and live up to my words.

But still, I don't want to kill people, even if they do sort of have it coming…

I don't have to worry about that, though. My job is to go in and get the boy and the only reason I'm armed is so that I can defend myself and Donovan in case someone comes after us.

Of course, there's also the adrenaline. Something about rushing into a building with SWAT teams and mercenaries armed to the teeth just makes the rational part of my head go out the window. It's like putting myself in danger is experiencing the ultimate high – I'm risking everything I have, and because I don't have much, that doesn't give me pause.

We stuck to the plan. Brennan stayed outside with a team of paramedics that were on the scene in advance, while Booth ignored that I don't like to be touched long enough to tug on the straps of my vest, making sure it was secure. Booth moved to the side of the door going into the old gas station, holding out his gun, while I flattened myself to the wall next to him. Taking his lead I got my sidearm from the holster at my side and held it in front of me with the safety off.

Booth raised his hand to his forehead in a salute to one of the SWAT members and I heard a yell from around the station. That was apparently the cue, because Booth ducked and rushed in the door after kicking it open.

I followed quickly behind him and a shot rang out sharply, the noise echoing in my ears. Then the gunfire was much closer as Booth fired. I looked up – there was a man shooting at us from behind the checking counter, holding a small handheld. Several people shot at the same time – the SWATs and Booth while I moved out from behind the FBI agent and went toward the back of the store, keeping my back to the wall. The man behind the counter crumpled, half a dozen crimson stains growing on his shirt before he stumbled, his hands dropping the gun and scratching at the counter before he fell.

I swallowed, blinking against the water suddenly clouding in my eyes – I need my vision clear. I cursed under my breath. I don't _want _to cry over the man's shocking death (half a dozen bullets – overkill, anyone?), and I knew that I wasn't grieving at all. I was… shocked. At the brutality. If someone shot at me, I'd shoot them in the leg or the arm or even the abdomen, but not fatally. None of the injuries on the mercenary had been anywhere but packed around the chest, and now I know why Booth wanted me to wait outside. We aren't here to seek justice. We're here to literally _take out _the mercenaries.

I didn't give myself a reprieve, instead advancing along the back of the store. They wouldn't keep Donovan out here in the front – he would be being kept in back. About a dozen more men swarmed out of a door at the back end of the store and quickly spread out, and the room filled with the sounds of gunfire once again. Since Booth had ordered me to not put myself in unnecessary danger, I waited for a moment to give the mercenaries time to move away from the door so I wouldn't have to get so close to them in order to get the child.

I watched as the mercenaries toppled, falling over with blasts of light as the gunpowder in the barrels exploded. They fell lifelessly and seconds later their clothes were stained with crimson. I swallowed and my hands shook, my knuckles turning white as I held onto my gun shakily. I really, really don't want to join this. This isn't seeming so much of a rescue mission as it is a slaughter.

When there were only a few left, and they had gotten smart and taken up defensive positions, I moved from behind the aisle and to the old beer cooler that was no longer working. Pressed against the glass, I let the SWAT team distract the kidnappers while I snuck behind them and to the door in back of the station, slipping inside.

My eyes landed on the shaking boy hiding underneath a table. The blonde-haired eight-year-old, although twice Parker's age, made me think of Booth's child. He was crying and covering his ears, trying to shield himself from the gunfire in the next room, and one of his hands was wrapped heavily with blood-stained gauze.

Next I saw another mercenary, one that I hadn't counted on. He shot at me and without time to raise the gun, I dropped to the floor to dodge the bullet, which implanted itself in the wall behind me with a loud cracking noise. I rolled over onto my back, holding up the gun and aiming a shot at the mercenary, a man with African features and a scowl.

I fired quickly but the man moved faster. Shaken from the deaths of so many people who hadn't even had time to make a defense strategy, I was easy for him to reach, the bullet from my sidearm moving harmlessly past.

He grasped the barrel of my gun and yanked it up to the ceiling, throwing his down onto a table. I was unwilling to relinquish my weapon so when he tugged, the considerable strength in his hold pulled me up to my feet. _Damn, who does he think he is, the Incredible Hulk? _The moment he had me on my feet I let go of the gun and pushed forward, hitting him in the chest with my shoulder. He was pushed back and caught off guard, so I used his shock to my advantage and turned slightly, kicking him in the stomach. He doubled over but grabbed my ankle before I could pull back and I ended up falling over with him.

I landed hard, hitting my head on the concrete, and scrambled for the gun in his grasp, taking it back, and then I pushed myself away, rolling over. It was much harder for me to fight in such close quarters with the heavy vest strapped so tightly, not only making it harder to breathe but also changing up my center of balance. While he was down, I did a very stupid thing that I thought was a good idea.

I started pulling at the straps of my vest, loosening them.

I jumped out of the way of the mercenary as he rolled over onto his stomach and reached for my legs to pull me back down. I got one of the buckles undone and then started tugging at the bottom, lifting it over my head while constantly moving to keep myself out of reach. I threw the vest down onto the ground and took a deep breath, relishing in the ability of easy breathing.

Booth is so going to kill me for this.

The man stumbled to his feet and charged at me again. Seeing as he didn't have his gun, I clenched my fists. _I hope I'm actually as good at combat as I like to think I am. _At the last moment I lunged to the side and reached around, hitting the guard in the neck, sending him reeling and stumbling. I wanted to go after him but he was really too strong for me to safely be on the offensive.

I waited for him to turn back to me, and to his credit, he got smarter and didn't try the same move again. "Come on, buddy," I taunted. "I'm seventeen. Are you going to be beaten by a teenage girl?" Damn the adrenaline.

He didn't speak, but he ran at me. I tried to do what I had done before, but as I ducked to bolt around him, he swiped at me, hitting me with a stinging blow, and picked me up roughly while I was dazed. The gun in my hand clattered to the floor. He was way too strong to be normal! I struggled and he dropped me onto the ground. I flipped so I landed with my hands bracing myself from the fall and rolled just before he kicked at me, avoiding a bunch of fractured ribs.

I scrambled forward on my elbows before getting to my feet, reaching for the pocketknife in my pocket that the psycho didn't know that I had. I needed to end this quickly. The gunshots in the first room were growing less frequent, meaning that it was almost over, and I need to get Donovan out.

The next time he came after me, I ducked quickly, which he predicted, and he kicked at me. I jumped over his leg and on top of him, sending the both of us sprawling out onto the floor. Before I gave myself the time to think about what I was doing, I raised the knife above my head and brought it down in the man's shoulder, away from vital arteries and organs.

It was sickening. Blood burst from the wound and sprayed over my arm, making me flinch back. I felt the blade pushing the tissue away and ripping the flesh that didn't move, and I closed my eyes against the mercenary's yowl of pain.

I pulled my knife back out and snapped it closed – _I'll boil it in hot water to clean it later – _and let him writhe on the floor, feeling guilty but grim. If I hadn't done that I wouldn't be able to take care of Donovan now.

Donovan was still hiding under the table, watching his kidnapper lay on the floor and moan, turning pale while and sweating as the crimson blossomed over his shirt. I picked up my vest from the floor and studied it for a second. It was thin enough to fit a child for a few minutes. "Donovan, don't look at him anymore," I instructed softly, kneeling down by the child, who only shrank away from me in fear. I should have thought about that – he just saw me stab someone. Of course he's frightened. "It's okay now, you're safe, I promise."

I reached under the table to him, bending down. "No!" Donovan yelled, his eyes shutting tightly. Tear tracks marked his red cheeks and when I touched his shoulder he turned and bit me.

"Ow!" I cried indignantly. "Hey, Donovan, really, stop. You're safe! I won't hurt you!"

"Just get away!" He cried.

"They're not going to hurt you anymore," I said again, trying to reassure him that I was safe, and that it was okay to come with me.

"No, go away!" He kicked me and I flinched back.

I growled before the thought occurred to me. _His safe word. _"Paladin," I told him, inching towards him again, this time holding the vest. "Donovan, paladin." Donovan sniffled when he heard me but he stopped yelling. "Paladin," I repeated, easing close enough to him to touch his shoulder. "Come on, Donovan. Paladin. My name's Holly. I'm going to take you to some doctors and then you're going to see your father. You're safe now."

Donovan whimpered but he didn't push me away and I took that as a good sign. I pulled him gently out from under the table and quickly wrapped the bulletproof vest around him before standing up and lifting him into my arms protectively. He cradled his injured hand against his chest and leaned back against mine as a last bullet echoed.

"Come on," I whispered, looking around the back room. I pushed the back door open with my foot and slipped through, holding Donovan Decker, the kidnapped child, protectively to me while he tried to shield his eyes from seeing anything else.

* * *

><p>I was horrified to learn of what had happened in the station after I'd left the front room. The line of gurneys seemed never-ending. The dozen mercenaries that had jumped in to help the first had all been killed. <em>It wasn't a mission for justice. It was more like a massacre. <em>And maybe they deserved it, maybe they didn't. I couldn't be the judge of that. But my stomach twisted uncomfortably every time I heard the zip of a body bag from the coroner's van. I had been a part of that ruthless slaughter, and knowing that made my blood feel like sludge.

I stayed near Donovan, proud of myself for getting him out before he'd been hurt any more than he already had been. He was sitting up on a stretcher, his hand rewrapped with hospital gauze, and I'd helped the paramedics by checking his vitals. He was fine, but his heart was racing, which was due to the stress. I'd have been concerned if he was completely normal.

Donovan held my hand tightly and I wasn't about to pull away until his dad got here, both because Donovan was traumatized and because to be truthful, I might be, too. I hadn't anticipated it being such a… bloodbath? Does it qualify as a bloodbath? Maybe not, but it was definitely mass murder. A black-and-white squad car pulled up a little bit away, and when the back door opened, Carl Decker was escorted up to the police tape and his son was pointed out to him.

The older Decker's eyes lit up when he saw his son and his hand moved down his face to his chin, his face glistening with tears in the sirens' lights. "Is my dad crying?" Donovan asked me, looking from his father up to me curiously, sounding a bit disappointed.

I sighed softly, understanding why he felt that way. _Hey, dad, guess what? I'm safe and alright! What?! Why are you crying about that?! _I squeezed his unharmed hand softly. "I think he's just crying because he's happy that he's got you back."

With the hand Donovan wasn't holding on to, I saluted solemnly to Carl Decker. I'm not an American soldier but it seemed symbolic and fitting; this all happened because Decker was defending the American troops against K.B.C. Systems for selling faulty armor, and even though Decker and I were on opposite ends of the spectrum in some ways, we both wanted the same fundamental things. No more wars, justice for criminals, liberty, and safety for children. Maybe it was just because I'd saved his child from the middle of a slaughter, but Decker saluted me back before I brought my hand down again.

* * *

><p>"Well done," Weeks praised Brennan, Booth and I, lacking in sincerity. He was going through the motions because it was his job, not because he really felt relief that the chaotic mess was over and done with.<p>

"Yeah," Booth said shortly, low in patience. With narrowed eyes, he continued with, "I hope you're really good at your job, Weeks."

"Why is that?" Weeks asked with an irritated roll of his eyes.

"Because otherwise, you've got nothing going for you," Booth finished coldly with narrowed eyes before walking roughly past, knocking the attorney back with his shoulder as he went by.

Brennan bit her lip as she watched Booth's back while he retreated, pulling at the straps and shrugging the jacket down his arms as he went back to the SWAT van. "He's a father himself," the anthropologist offered as a weak means of explanation.

Weeks snorted. "Thank God I always had the sense not to let that happen to me."

I surveyed him stonily for a moment. _No, _of course I don't want children of my own – at least, not now and not in the foreseeable future – I mean, think about it. I'm seventeen, with no family, lousy insurance coverage, and a job working in the bar while I moonlight more often than not with the FBI and Jeffersonian Institution on murder cases. I have no means of supporting and raising a child, nor do I particularly have the desire to live with pregnancy or be a single parent in the slums of D.C., but children aren't curses. They can be irritating and spoiled sometimes, but kids are worth fighting for. It was because of a child that I subjected myself to hell today, entirely of my own free will. People lucky enough to have children of their own should cherish them and hold them in the highest priority.

So, with my mind made up, I lunged forward quickly before Weeks could even blink. I punched him in the face, relishing in the dull sound of skin hitting skin as his head snapped around and he reeled back. I huffed and ran off to catch up with Booth. Brennan just smirked at the attorney before following me.

"Do you think K.B.C. hired the mercenaries?" I asked Booth curiously. All day, our only priority had been finding Donovan Decker, not finding the motives of the kidnappers, so once we'd found the more than likely possibility that K.B.C. was behind it, we'd latched onto that and used it as driftwood in the figurative ocean.

"We'll let the grand jury figure that out," Booth told Brennan and I as we fell into step beside him. "We did our jobs." Booth looked down to me in particular as I stepped beside him, keeping up with his relatively speedy pace. "Great job, kid. You really didn't have to go in." He paused for a minute like he was having trouble with his words. "We found another guy on the floor. There was a stab wound in his shoulder where Donovan was hiding."

I caught onto the question and raised my shoulders sheepishly although as I looked away and in front of us, my gaze turned dark. _I stabbed a man. I actually, literally stabbed someone. _"Hm. Yeah. That was me. Sorry." Thankfully, Booth didn't ask in further detail.

Brennan held her head high proudly. "It's not often I get to help save someone _before _they die," she stated with no small about of satisfaction.

"Bones, every time you catch a murderer, you save his next victim," Booth rationalized, looking to the side at her.

"Hmm," I hummed in contemplation for a moment before shaking my head. "No, I get what she means. It's different this way."

"Yeah," Booth said noncommittally with a nod. "Still glad you don't have any kids?" He asked Brennan.

Brennan looked up to him, tilting her head, not understanding why he was asking. "Yeah. Why?"

"Looking at that boy and his dad," Booth explained with a half hearted shrug. "I just thought you'd change your mind."

"No," Brennan and I denied at the same time, shaking our heads. We smiled at each other around the FBI agent.

"Still glad you do have a kid?" I asked Booth seriously.

Booth smiled ahead of him, most likely thinking about Parker. "Gladder today than yesterday," he answered.

Brennan sighed, crossing her arms. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Yeah," Booth agreed with a nod. "It's complicated."


End file.
